Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot (WTF)
by Flashpoint33
Summary: Season 8 - Beckett has chosen her own personal rabbit hole over Castle once again and she's left their marriage thinking that will protect him from the backlash. Believing he has nothing left to lose, he turns his attention to his own unfinished, shadowy history which could end up being the one story that could separate them forever.
1. Chapter 1 - WTF

**W** hiskey- **T** ango- **F** oxtrot

(WTF?)

He felt as though a flash bang grenade had discharged within the confines of his skull leaving him stunned, disoriented and fighting an almost overwhelming white noise that threatened to drop him to his knees. There was no logic, no reasonable path of thought that could allow him to fathom how his wife could be standing in front of him saying these words to him. A packed bag near her feet snared his periphery as she spoke causing him to abandon the "smorelettes" already beginning to sear on the stove.

"Rick, do you trust me?" her voice broke in a way that tripped a series of silent alarms that radiated from the center of his being.

"Of course," the response came with an automaticity that tightened the strings of his gut and destabilized his resolve.

He knew what was coming. She didn't even have to say it – not really, but she would say it. He would give her no choice because there was no way in hell he was going to make it easy for her to just walk away from him. If she were leaving their marriage, leaving him, she would have to say the words and see his face when she said them.

"I need you to trust me now. I have to do this on my own," she hesitated giving him an opening, but he left it untouched.

The shaking of his head made it hard for her to follow the narrowing of his eyes, but the way his shoulders stiffened and his jaw retracted let her know that this was going to be harder than she had imagined, "When has that ever worked out for us?"

She pushed his question and the undeniable truth in it away, "I know you might not understand, but it has to be this way. I have to do this my way." The walls of the loft had begun to close in, and she felt that old familiar urge to escape.

"No, Kate, you don't. You're making a choice to chase whatever has gotten a hold of you over us…over me," Castle's voice dropped to a coarse whisper.

"What happened to the promise we made about no more secrets? You couldn't even keep it for 24 hours?" He challenged her directly because he knew he was right. She had a new secret – one that had awakened whatever it was inside of her that drove her relentlessly once unleashed. A secret she was consciously choosing to keep to herself.

She ignored the question and pressed on with her agenda; "I need to do this alone."

"I can't believe it - not after everything we've…" It wasn't that he couldn't find the words to finish; he just knew they would be of no use. He could see it in her eyes.

"And when it's done, I hope that – I hope that you'll have it in your heart to take me back," the words came out sounding contrived like they were from a poorly conceived arc in a television drama.

There was no doubt in his mind. She was on her path, the one that propelled her forward sans reason or common sense. A track that had brought them both face to face with death so many times, that he had long since given up keeping score.

"That son of a bitch Bracken was right," he turned away from her to attend to the charring smorelettes.

Beckett stood stock still like a deer caught in the headlights of a semi on a midnight darkened country road. She knew it was in her best interest to move, but somehow couldn't.

Castle grabbed the pan's handle and slung it into the sink, "He said I would never be enough to hold you. That being my wife would be a momentary detour."

She couldn't find any words to use in her defense that would do anything other than make the situation worse, so she didn't say anything.

"Whatever this is, Beckett, we can figure it out together; like always," he couldn't stop himself from giving one last ditch effort to reach her.

"No, not this time," she knew it was time to go. It was time to end this. "I love you so much, Rick, but I have to figure some things out so we can have our happily ever after."

"Then say it," it was a demand cloaked in practiced civility.

"I don't want to hurt you. I love you," she tried to avoid the corner he was maneuvering her into with his request.

He took several steps toward her, "If you are leaving me, I need to hear you say it."

His voice had lost its even timbre and seemed to cause the very air around him to vibrate.

"Please don't make me do this," Rita's words crashed into her brain - dive down into the rabbit hole if you must, but think twice about who you bring with you…anybody who dies now – that blood is on you.

"Say it," the urgency in his voice intensified.

She heaved in a deep breath trying to keep her blood that was suddenly running cold moving inside her body, "It's over Castle. We're done for now. I'm done."

The hurt traveled across his face in undulating waves, each more intense than the last. In trying to distance herself from the pain she was causing, she looked away from him. If she had only waited a moment longer, it might have changed the course of everything. A few seconds more, she might have seen the anguished anger roiling beneath the disbelief that camouflaged the surface of his face. Seeing such volatile emotion masked behind his grief might have compelled her to tell him the truth bringing him back to her where she could truly protect him and not leave him alone to flail recklessly and dangerously for answers of his own.

Beckett had accepted that the devil that drove her would not be easily cast out, but failed to remember that her husband was much the same. Having willingly set aside his own path to be with her, he had abandoned it littered with unanswered questions, elusive memories, and what he could only assume was unfinished business.

She had been his reason to forget, to let the story remain untold. Now she was gone, choosing her secrets and personal demons over him once again. All that was left for him was his story and now there was no reason not to try and recover it. A shift had taken place in him when she said the words that ended their marriage and she had missed seeing it by seconds. She had made her choice and unbeknownst to her, so had he.


	2. Chapter 2 - Almost Doesn't Count

Chapter 2 – Almost Doesn't Count

Alexis found it a chore to pull her gaze from the mundane view outside the PI office window when she heard the outer office door open and then close. Forcing herself to drop arms that had been crossed protectively over her chest, she moved toward her dad's office door thinking that a new case was just what she needed. A distraction, something that would help keep her mind off of everything that was happening.

"Alexis," her stepmother's voice sounded tired and more than just a little hesitant.

"Kate, what are you doing here?" It was a natural response if not a totally welcoming one.

"Where's your father?" The question seemed easier to avoid than answer.

The girl turned back into the room and only looked at Kate after perching on the edge of her father's desk. She crossed her arms once again taking a defensive stance without even realizing it, "He's not here."

Disappointment flashed across her face and Alexis saw it, but did not comment, "When will he be back? He's not answering his cell."

Her pale skin began to flush red with a myriad of emotion, "I don't know when he's coming back and you can give up calling his cell."

Kate was confused and it showed. She stepped deeper into the room sensing that something she didn't know about was up, "Did he lose it again?"

She shook her head and glanced to her left where a cell phone lay blank faced and silent. It was Castle's.

"How could he forget his phone?" Kate was asking questions of herself that her mind was generating at break neck speed. "He always has his phone. What are you not telling me?"

"He didn't forget it," Alexis' response was short and gave no more information than the question required as she was contending with questions of her own that had nothing to do with her father.

Beckett's frustration simmered to the surface, "What do you mean? Why would he leave it here if he was going to be out of the office?"

"Kate, what do you want?" When she asked the question, she was quite aware of its duality.

"I want to talk to Castle," she thought the answer should be obvious.

Alexis sighed heavily as if weighing her words carefully, "Well, you can't."

"I know you don't understand what's going on right now between your father and me, and I'm sorry for that, but I need to talk to your dad." Kate glanced at her watch. Vikram would be waiting for her.

The novice investigator didn't miss the check, "Looks like you have somewhere else you need to be."

Thinking she deserved the shot, Beckett let it go, "Alexis, how can I reach him?"

Dropping the façade of bravado and her protective stance, she stood up and went around to the back of the desk, "You can't." She pulled open a drawer and removed a large legal sized manila envelope and a jump drive. She met the still newly minted captain's eyes, "And neither can anyone else."

Kate suddenly didn't like the vector this discussion was taking in the least, "What's going on? What has he done?"

After a brief hesitation, Alexis explained what she could. The fear and anxiety in Beckett's voice was too real to dismiss. "That man. The one dad tracked down in that warehouse in Canada after he came back. He was here."

The bottom dropped out of Kate's stomach as though she were in a plane that had suddenly lost cabin pressure, "Henry Jenkins was in this office?"

She nodded and continued, "When I came in this morning, dad's office door was closed – locked actually."

Beckett diminished the distance between them to only a few feet, "What did you hear? It's really important that you tell me everything you know."

"I don't know much. They were talking in whispers. I don't think they knew I was here, but it was obvious that they didn't want to be overheard." Alexis clawed through her memory searching for anything that might be helpful.

"Think! There has to be something," Kate's mouth had dried out and tasted of the bile that her stomach was churning out.

Something did come to mind. She knew she had heard a name, but had no idea how it connected to anything. It really didn't make sense that her father and this Jenkins guy would be talking about him. "I did hear a name, but I don't think it's relevant to anything."

Kate put her hand on Alexis' shoulder and stared at her with pleading eyes, "Tell me. It might give me something to go on."

Alexis looked unsure and seemed to have lost the slightest bit of her composure, "It's crazy, really. It couldn't possibly mean anything."

"Let me decided that. Please, please just give me the name." There was no way she was leaving without it.

"Storm. They were talking about Derek Storm." She felt a deep sense of relief when she finally spat out the name. It had been bothering her for hours and telling someone – even Beckett – made her feel better about it.

Kate was taken aback. "Derek Storm? Alexis, are you certain that's what you heard?"

"I'm positive. I heard it more than once from both of them, but I couldn't make out much of anything else." There was a resolute confidence in her tone leaving Kate no alternative other than to believe she had overhead exactly what she said she did.

Beckett began thinking out loud, "What would make Henry Jenkins risk coming here at all? Castle said he made it clear that there would be no more contact between them EVER."

Alexis shared what little she still had, "They were in there a long time – at least an hour after I got here. Once in a while their voices would get loud enough for me to hear pieces of the conversation. Nothing definitive, just snippets."

"Tell me," Kate's eyes drilled into hers.

"I heard Jenkins tell dad that they didn't have much time and that he had to make a decision and dad said something about risk," Alexis' countenance was distant as though she was trying to go back to that moment and retrieve whatever might be there.

Kate's mind was reeling, processing and assessing, "What else did they say?"

After a few agonizing seconds passed, she answered as though she were no longer in the room, but squarely in the recent past, "He told him that it was completely up to dad, but that he had to decide right then." Alexis' eyes darted restlessly as she remembered more, "He asked him what Derek Storm would do."

Beckett had a vague idea forming about what was happening and a sense of dread took up residence within her, twisting her insides and crushing the air from her lungs, "It's those missing six weeks. It has to be."

Apprehension diffused itself freely throughout the red head's bloodstream, "You think he went back?"

"I think they came for him again, but this time they asked," Kate cut off the rest of her thought as a deluge of guilt threatened to bury her.

Alexis took it from there, "Who are they exactly? Why now? Oh my god, it's because you left him. It's because you didn't need him anymore." Understanding hit the girl like a tsunami.

Her stepdaughter was losing it and Beckett had to be certain she had all the information there was to be had, "Did you hear anything else? Anything."

The girl was trembling and her breathing was shallow and labored, "No, nothing else they said. I just heard him leave through the secret back entrance."

"You never saw Jenkins?" Kate's suspicions were suddenly peaked.

She nodded resolutely, "I saw him pass in front of the main door. He had on a hat and a jacket with the collar turned up."

"Then how can you be sure it was him?" Beckett was becoming less and less sure of Alexis' story.

"He looked right at me when he passed the door. It was him. I'm absolutely positive, Kate. The man in dad's office this morning was Henry Jenkins or whatever his real name is." The firmness in both her voice and gaze convinced the veteran cop beyond a shadow of a doubt that what she had seen and heard was legitimate intel.

She should have known. She should have seen it - would have seen it if she hadn't been blinded by her own all consuming beast. That drive to engage in the chase, to seek justice at all costs, to find the answers had kept her from seeing what was right in front of her; that the only way to truly protect Castle was to be with him.

Alexis' voice yanked Beckett back to the current foreboding moment, "He left these for you. Said to give them to you only if you came here looking for him." She extended the hand that still clutched the manila envelope and the jump drive.

Kate took them and stared at them with a phobic gaze. Her eyes searched the girl's for a clue, but found none.

"I'll give you a few minutes." Alexis left the room pulling the door shut behind her sorely in need of a few of her own.

As she took a seat in his desk chair, his name tumbled from her lips, "Castle."

Her hand fluttered over the metal butterfly clasp holding the flap of the envelope closed. She mentally measured the weight and volume of what could be inside and allowed her mind free reign to run away with itself postulating and hypothesizing on what the contents might be and how knowing what they were would change her life.

Forcing herself back to the present, she rolled the flash drive between her fingers as if deciding what to do first. Popping open his laptop, she typed in Kate Castle – a password update he had been unable to resist sharing with her the moment he had done it.

The computer dragged itself from sleep mode, and she found it somehow reassuring that he had not changed it. After inserting the drive into the port, she opened the envelope and took out the rather thick heap of papers.

The top sheet was handwritten, a note for her. As she began to read, the soft strands of a song she didn't recognize began playing through the computer's speakers.

 **Kate,**

 **If you are reading this, I guess something happened to draw you back to me like so many times before. The only difference is that this time I am not here waiting for you to decide what you really want is me again. Even if that were true – that you do believe that I am all you want - we both know that would only last for a little while. I finally get it. I am finally there. We almost had it all, my love, but we both know that almost doesn't count, and at least for me, almost is not enough. I am trying to understand how we got here, but am not having much luck. One thing I do know as a writer is that all stories, even the really compelling ones, eventually end. I'm not much of a country music fan, but they do tell great stories and I stumbled across one that told ours. The singer's words say it far better than I ever could. The papers in this envelope will allow you and Alexis to take care of any thing that should arise in my absence. Good luck Beckett. I hope you find what you are currently looking for and eventually your happily ever after. I love you – Always.**

The song had played itself out by the time she had read through his note several times and could even begin to focus on it. She rustled through the stack of papers: a power of attorney in Alexis' name, paper work for the PI office, insurance policies of various amounts with the three women most important to him named as beneficiaries, and lastly, at the very bottom of the stack were divorce papers. Seeing his signature on those knocked all of the wind from her and she found that she literally had to put her head between her knees to get it back.

The song began to play again seemingly on a loop or auto replay. This time she listened and heard. The words cut deeply, resonating in the most painful way possible. What he had meant by almost not counting or being enough was explained in torturous detail.

The tears fell uncontrollably and the sobs that rose up from within her came from a place of grief, deepest sorrow and beyond.

Alexis stood at the outer office window staring into the abyss that had opened up in front of her. There was no doubt in her mind what was in that envelope or what the words to that song meant. The door between them did not insulate her from the truth that was inside. No longer a child, she could not hide from the decisions and choices of those closest to her. She would have to face them – live with them – even survive them. And because she was nothing if not her father's daughter, she knew that she would.

 ** _Author's Note:_**

The song referenced in the chapter is Mark Wills – Almost Doesn't Count

If you are interested in knowing what Kate heard – I am including the lyrics -

It's a great song available on ITunes.

 **Almost Doesn't Count**

Mark Wills

"Almost made you love me

Almost made you cry

Almost made you happy, baby

Didn't I, didn't I

You almost had me thinkin'

You were turned around

But everybody knows

Almost doesn't count

Almost heard you saying

You were finally free

What was always missing for you, babe

You'd found it in me

But you can't get to heaven

Half off the ground

Everybody knows

Almost doesn't count

I can't keep lovin' you

One foot outside the door

I hear a funny hesitation

Of a heart that's never really sure

Can't keep on tryin'

If you're looking for more

Than all I could give you

Than what you came here for

Gonna find me somebody

Not afraid to let go

Want a no doubt be there kind of girl

You came real close

But every time you built me up

You only let me down

And everybody knows

Almost doesn't count


	3. Chapter 3 - Hard Cold Truths

Chapter 3 – Hard Cold Truths

Each and every day following that cryptic phone call had been an emotional and physical beating for Kate. The strain on her system had been persistent, intense and had taxed her reserves far beyond anything she had endured before. And now, Castle was gone. Not missing, but off the grid by choice pursuing the shadows of unrecognizable villains that had him tossing, turning, and talking in his sleep more nights than not. This new stressor, coupled with an almost two week old gun shot wound that would not heal, coagulated into a deep sense of worry. What if some sort of side effect from it all manifested itself into forcing an error in judgment or action on her part? If someone else died, it would be all on her.

Beckett had bolted through the same secret exit as the fake Henry Jenkins as soon as she had been able to pull herself together. Jagged fragments of the letter and song her husband had left refused to stay where she tried to put them - deep in a dark corner of her mind. So how she came to be standing in front of the loft's door was anyone's guess. Pausing only briefly to catch her breath and find her key, she was more than a little surprised when it actually nudged the tumblers in the lock to roll back in hollow welcome. She half expected them to have been changed. A consequence she knew was often a cohort associated with divorce papers.

Divorce. She had left the papers on his desk – all of them. She didn't want anything to do with any of it. Most of all she didn't want a divorce. The shock of seeing those papers with his signature already there and a line underneath it with her name neatly typed waiting for hers was more jarring than the fact that he was gone again. She could not begin to imagine what that would even look or feel like. At first she wondered how could he, but then was honest with herself and had to admit there was really no way he could not.

The loft sat silent, empty, but for her, he was there. Not in any real physical form, but his presence emanated from each piece of furniture, every decorative accent, every color. She was there too. This had been her home for a while, and she missed it more than she had ever dreamed possible. A dull thudding pain began at the base of her neck and she made her way to the kitchen bar and sat down. Had it really only been a week and a half since she told him it was over? A scant ten days since she had been soothed by the sound of his deep bass voice resonating off these very walls.

She hadn't seen him since that night. Not once had he come to the station or shown up at a crime scene or even the morgue. There had been no phone calls, texts or pretense for communicating with her. For once he had listened and hadn't tried to charm his way around her demands. He had gone completely dark and it was tearing her apart.

"Katherine, what are you doing here?" Martha Rogers had used a key of her own to gain entrance into the loft.

Beckett rose as she turned to face the woman who had been more mother than mother-in-law to her since they had married, "Martha, I'm sorry. I was looking for Castle."

The older woman dropped her handbag on the couch and continued to the kitchen where she poured herself a glass of wine and one for Kate without inquiring if she even wanted one. "I find that somewhat hard to believe, dear."

Beckett sank back onto the barstool, "You've spoken to Alexis."

Martha's serrated tone put Kate's defenses on alert, "I'll ask you again. What are you doing in my son's home?"

"Not to long ago this was my home too," Beckett's voice was weak, tired and hovered barely above a whisper.

If she was looking for sympathy, she had run into the wrong mother, "Need I remind you that you are the one who abandoned my son and your marriage with no explanation?"

Kate shook her head dropping her chin in resignation, "No, no you don't, but you don't know the whole story."

Leaning forward on her elbows across the granite kitchen counter she offered an olive branch to the woman she had grown to care for as a daughter, a small window of opportunity for reformation, "I'm listening."

She looked up and into Martha's face and saw him in her, which caused her to initially falter, but ultimately tell her, "I can't."

Slowly straightening to her full height, Martha finished off her drink, her eyes never leaving Kate's face, "Then I think it's time for you to go."

Beckett stood as if on command, "When's the last time you saw or talked to him?"

"I think it's best that you leave your key when you go," the older woman announced firmly ensuring that she understood it was not merely a suggestion.

"I think he's been drawn back into something really dangerous by people who don't have his best interest in mind. He could get himself killed." Kate's headache began a new more intense pulsing rhythm in her skull.

Martha had begun herding her toward the door, but stopped short to stare into her eyes, "Am I to assume that you do, Katherine? Have his best interests in mind?"

Kate's eyes filled with tears, "I wish…I wish I could make you understand."

Martha's resolve wavered as the love she had once felt for her daughter-in-law pooled just beneath the surface, "I'm still listening."

Beckett trembled with the exertion it took not to spill everything she knew. Her mouth even tried to form the words that would extricate her from the mire of the pit she found herself in, but instead she asked one more time, "When is the last time you spoke to him? Did he say anything that might help me find him?"

A firm line replaced the subtle curve that normally graced Martha's lips, "We're done here. It's time to go."

Kate's eyes were drawn to the hand outstretched in front of her, "I need to find him."

"You need to leave my son alone. Just go. Please don't disrespect my family by coming here again. I'll take that key now." Any trace of empathy had vanished from her visage.

Beckett pulled the key ring from her pocket. It was the only one on it and it dangled in front of both of their eyes, singular and solitary, when she held it out to her.

As Kate crossed the threshold into the hallway, the sound the door made when it met the jamb caused her to flinch involuntarily with its finality. Leaning back against it, she allowed herself to wonder what she had really hoped to find at the loft. Had she really believed that Castle would be there? That there was a shred of a chance that she could've stopped him before he disappeared again down his own rabbit hole? She didn't think so. Her motives had not been that altruistic. They had been far more base and primitive. The truth was that she had wanted to be some place she knew he had been most recently. A place they had been together and been happy where she could hope to connect with him even if it was just in memory. It had been a messy, ill-conceived, desperate attempt on her part to salvage something that was obviously already well out of reach. It had been a mistake, another in a seemingly ever-growing string.

As she stepped out of his building onto the street, she breathed deeply of the cool early evening air hoping it would bring her some relief from the massive headache she was fighting. She felt really warm and as a chill passed through her, she sensed rather than heard someone behind her. Kate whirled on her heel and trained her gun in the direction of the intrusion.

Rita chuckled, "I think I need to work on my approach."

"Fuck, Rita, you've got to stop doing that," Kate holstered her weapon and flashed her badge in the direction of a young couple who had been startled by the scene.

"Well, we could stop meeting like this if you would just stay in your lane." She was smiling, but she wasn't happy.

Suddenly angry that she had been told the same thing twice in less than five minutes, Kate lashed out, "Castle is my lane."

Rita's chuckle was rife with sarcasm, "Not according to my scorecard, Captain."

The comment stung, burned even as it hit its mark, "Why are you here?"

The operative raised a knowing eyebrow, "Mother-in-law not so happy to see you?"

"Getting kind of personal aren't we?" Kate was still struggling to find her emotional footing after what had happened with Martha in the loft.

"You think that was out of line? We are family," Rita paused as though calculating her next move, "of a sort, and you seem to be running a little short as of late."

Beckett's frustration with the conversation sharpened her words to a razor's point, "I think our definitions of family may be drastically different."

"Probably how we treat them too," Rita's acquiescence wasn't meant to be conciliatory and the steely coldness that had seeped into her stare made that readily apparent.

Angry tears invaded her eyes, but Kate fought to keep them from breaching, "What do you want from me?

Satisfied, Rita turned the conversation to the real reason why she had come, "Why were you at the PI office today looking for Castle?"

Kate didn't even bother asking how she knew; "I needed to find out if an old contact had reached out to him recently."

"Exposing Smith was ballsy – horrifically self-serving, but ballsy." There might even have been the slightest hint of respect in her tone.

Exasperation rifled through Beckett's mind causing her to stumble into Rita's trap and try to defend herself, "Smith was Castle's asset. I thought he might contact him and give away the lead he gave me."

"I guess that would have been a fly in this finely tuned plan you and that nobody analyst have to bring down the heavily fortified, highly trained, over funded and motivated LockSat?"

The grating sarcasm shoved Kate onto the offensive; "I had to be sure that he wouldn't involve himself in this. I was trying to protect him. Isn't that what you told me to do?"

"I advised you to let LockSat's designated scapegoat AAG Allison Hyde be your ticket back to your husband, your new job, and the Norman Rockwell future you had to look forward to. You did not take that advice and so here we are." Rita's comments were delivered in a very matter of fact way – oddly free of accusation or condemnation.

Before Beckett could respond, the woman closed in on her so aggressively that she stepped back on instinct only to find that she had been cornered against the wall of the building with nowhere to go, "I'm here to deliver a message Captain Beckett from people so high above your clearance and pay grade that you'd pass out from lack of oxygen before you got within a mile of them, so I need you to listen very carefully. You can do whatever you want as far as your pursuit of LockSat goes, but you are not – repeat – NOT to go looking for Castle. If you ever loved him. Leave this alone. Nod if you understand." She did.

Rita backed away from Kate about two feet and her face lit up with a radiant smile, "Damn it's a beautiful night for a walk."

Beckett found her voice; she was livid, "You're psychotic."

Rita had already turned her back on Kate and was walking away, but her answer made its way to her even over the din of rush hour traffic, "Sounds like a good reason to do what I tell you."

Kate called after her, "Rita! WAIT!"

The light was forming a ghostly silhouette around her and she paused to offer one final piece of advice before she would round the corner and be out of sight, "Stay in your fucking lane, Beckett. Stay in your lane."


	4. Chapter 4 - Heart and Darkness

Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot

Chapter 4 – Heart and Darkness

Martha refilled her glass of wine, took a couple of long sips and topped it off again before abandoning the kitchen with both her glass and Kate Beckett's untouched one for the comfort of her son's home office. She sat one down on the edge of Castle's desk and soothed herself with the contents of the other as she gazed out the window, "You can come out now, Richard. She's gone."

Castle stepped from the deepest hued corner of the room moving as a shadow does looking very much unlike himself. He was dressed in ink black from head to toe in shirt and trousers that fit as though they were second skin. The only thing that broke the monochromatic image was the charcoal glint of steel jammed in the outline of a shoulder holster.

"I brought you her wine. Seemed a pity to waste it." Instinctively she stayed where she was doing what she was. Should someone be on the street watching, waiting, hunting; they would not find him because of her.

"You knew I was here." His voice was deep and barely above a whisper, but she could still hear admiration in it.

"Yes, but not until the end," she sounded pained and it made him want to go to her, but he stayed where he was cloaked in the darkness. "I didn't say to her what I did because you were listening, I said it in spite of it."

He felt compelled to tell her that it meant something to him that she had taken his side, expressed her disapproval, and dismissed his wife from the family as long as she was unwilling to justify herself. He didn't – couldn't. Though he felt the longing, it was as though it were off in the distance identifiable to him only as an echo and easily ignored as it faded away. The Richard Castle who would have done so without a second thought was not in that room. He wasn't anywhere. Not now, and quite possibly, not ever.

"I don't know how I would have made it through this again if I didn't hear from you that this is what you want." Her glass had run dry and since he obviously wasn't going to drink the other, it gave her a legitimate reason to ease away from the window and out of the line of sight from the street.

"I know, Mother," and for just a moment he sounded like her little boy or at least he did in her mind's eye.

Now able to look at him, she did. He stood in front of her a ringer for any one of the many heroes he had written into existence merely to unravel mysteries and bring the dangerous to justice. His eyes glowed their bluest sapphire, but what was behind them was strange and unfamiliar to her, "You are your father's son after all."

He laughed softly, "Oh, I think there is far more Martha Rogers in me than you think."

Deflection had always been her son's tell, "So he is a part of this."

"He's a part of me if that's what you mean," Castle's expression was too deeply shadowed to read.

Frustration coiled with fear leaked into her voice, "Richard, don't try and handle me. I know there is something you're not saying."

His silence was the only validation she was going to get from him on the topic, "I have to go."

Placing the glass on the corner of the desk closest to him, she abandoned all decorum and hugged him close while whispering urgently in his ear, "You go, Richard, and do whatever it is that needs to be done and then you come home."

He gave her what she needed. A returned embrace and assurances they both knew were valuable only in the moment they were spoken, "You and Alexis take care of one another. I'll be back before you know it."

Seconds later, Martha Rogers was back in the office window, glass of wine in hand wondering if she had just spoken with her only child for the very last time. She didn't know if she felt better or worse harboring the knowledge that Jackson Hunt was a part of the reason her son was going dark. The one comfort she did take from it was that whatever he was doing, his motivation had something to do with family and she knew better than anyone that there was nothing Castle would not do for family and that included coming home to them.

When barely a minute had passed, a lone indistinct figure slipped from the building into the alley where an equally aphotic van waited. Castle pulled open the back door and as he hoisted himself inside it began to pull away.

"This was an unnecessary risk, Rick," Henry Jenkins was both annoyed and relieved that the detour his asset had demanded before agreeing to return to the operation hadn't gotten both of them killed.

His jawline was set and not much in the mood for being chastised, "Not for me it wasn't."

"You clean?" Jenkins turned to the bank of computers along the driver's side of the van and typed in an encrypted message.

He nodded, "I left everything behind."

Henry slid his gaze from the computer screen where he waited for confirmation that his message had been received to the man who sat leaning against the opposite panel van wall staring hard at nothing, "You wouldn't be here right now if she hadn't left you." The observation was one he would store away for later use.

"I'm here because you convinced me that my help is crucial to the completion of this operation though I'm not quite sure how that's possible. I'm a writer and part-time gumshoe whose daughter has solved more cases than he has." He wasn't being self-deprecating as was his usual proclivity, just honest.

"Rick, listen to me. You are so much more than that. There are things you are going to have to know again to be a part of this. Things the agency is going to have to bring back." Jenkins seemed to really want to help him finish the transition from there to here.

"Things I asked to forget?"

He nodded, "You came back the last time for her. You couldn't do to her what your father did to your mother."

Jenkins had just handed him a piece of the puzzle that would help him understand why he had his memory erased in the first place, and he wanted more, "The memories – they would have gotten in the way of my being happy with Beckett?"

"You thought so," his attention went back to the computer screen.

Castle studied the man's profile, "Were we friends? You and me?"

Henry glanced back his way, "We trust each other, Rick."

"We must if I told you about Hollander's Woods."

Jenkins' face sobered, "Rendezvous point in eight clicks. What do you say we finish this thing?"

The same specter that Martha glimpsed behind her son's eyes when they said goodbye was back. This time it was an unmistakable part of his expression. Henry Jenkins had seen it before – knew it well. It was why he had come for him.


	5. Chapter 5 - Allegiances

Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot

Chapter 5 – Allegiances

The evening shift at the 12th precinct hummed with the same intensity and anxiety as the day. Stepping off the elevator, Beckett submerged herself in it, released completely to its hailing. New York was known as the city that never sleeps for a reason, and tonight, just like the city she served, every muscle was taut and knotted with raw nerves agape and reactive to the slightest disturbance. Beyond that, there was an ache she could not quell or intellectually assimilate. Her mind revolved around it, circling as though it were a foe to be targeted and subdued, but it became quickly apparent that grappling with it would have to wait.

The barrage began with the sound of the elevator bell signaling its departure. There were questions, a multitude of them that came frenetically and ceaselessly from every direction and department within the precinct. She was in charge now and the buck stopped with her. Her unexplained absence had left many at the 12th in a holding pattern awaiting her approval, recommendation, or signature. Everyone, it seemed, needed something from her, and they needed it hours ago.

When she finally made it to her office, Kate was greeted with a stack of messages all marked - Urgent - immediate call back required. Scanning them cursorily, she quickly separated what she believed were the truly crucial messages from those whose issues were urgent only on their end. It was on the second pass through the bundle that it dawned on her that none of them was from him. She shoved the thought from her consciousness, but the heaviness that it had brought to her heart remained.

She reached for the phone determined to plow her way through the select calls, but hesitated when she heard three voices demanding her attention, "Beckett, I need to talk to you. You can't just disappear anymore without telling someone where you are going. I've been covering for you all day." Javier stood immovable in the doorway with Ryan at his shoulder.

Vikram Singh attempted to push his way through the bro-block, "Captain Beckett it's imperative that we speak privately." None of the men looked happy nor ready to step aside.

"I've been trying to reach Castle all day, and he's not picking up," Ryan's tone was jittery with a spooky kind of precognition that something might be amiss.

Kate flinched inwardly cognizant of exactly why he wasn't answering his phone. She briefly locked eyes with each man before she spoke, "Why don't you all come in, close the door and we'll talk."

Espo glared at Vikram whom he considered to be nothing short of an opportunistic beady-eyed little weasel. His frustration that Beckett trusted this man over him and Ryan was festering into a wound that had the potential to run deep enough to do some permanent damage to their history and their future as friends and colleagues. It had taken time for him to get over the way she had left for the FED job without so much as a heads up. Her return hadn't served their years long friendship any better. It had been abrupt and chock full of expectation that things return to normal as quickly as possible which required some sort of selective amnesia on everyone's part to make it happen. What further angered him was that she either didn't see the situation for what it was or worse yet – didn't care.

Evaluating the point at issue, she decided to deal with Espo's displeasure first, "You're right, Javi. Things are different now, and I need to make the adjustment and be more present and available. It's not your job to cover for me anymore."

Ryan's brow furrowed as he considered the superficial nature of the response. He eyed his partner who was seriously sideways over the way things were evolving since Vikram Singh had arrived on the scene, "Have you heard from Castle?"

Something disturbing circulated behind her eyes, and her answer didn't match up with it, "I am not Castle's keeper."

"Not since you kicked him to the curb for some unknown reason," Espo's whisper was not much of one.

Kate's patience was wearing thin and everyone in the room could see it.

"Beckett, I really do need to speak with you about something quite important," Singh interrupted what was quickly becoming personal between the other three people in the room.

Javi turned on him his fury barely held in check, "And again, why are you even here?"

Vikram backed away as Kevin stepped into his customary role of peace-maker, "Beckett, come on. Could we have one minute?" He glanced at the analyst who had moved as far away from Javi as he could, but still remain in the room.

"I work here," he seemed to have regained a bit of the poise that had deserted him with Ryan standing between himself and the angry detective.

Javi moved toward him again and his partner held him back with a straight arm to the chest, "Your whole team gets iced and you miraculously survive only to land here at the 12th at exactly the same time Beckett decides to bail on her marriage and kick Castle out of the precinct."

"It's called coincidence," unfortunately for him, Vikram had no idea with whom he was dealing.

Kevin turned on him then, "There's no such thing. Castle taught me that. He taught us all that." He turned to Beckett his voice and expression pleading, "Isn't that right, Captain?"

The term soured on his tongue when she responded, "I really need to return these phone calls guys."

"We bein' dismissed?" Espo's ire was now all Kate's.

She nodded grim faced and the boys headed out the door where her commanding words changed the trajectory of their allegiance, "Vikram, you stay."

The door slammed shut by Kevin's hand mirrored the dissolution of more more than just the silence, "Something's not right here, Javi. How is Beckett picking that guy over us? We're a team – hell, we're family."

Espo was glaring back at the closed office door, "He's a nobody - a low level analyst from the AG's office who'd never met Beckett before he came here. He shows up, she goes rogue, ditches Castle, and suddenly he's her best friend. What's he doing here, bro?

Kevin's gaze followed the same path back to their captain's door, "I don't know and it doesn't look like we are in her loop."

"I want to shoot him in the face," Espo had the look. The one that said he wasn't kidding.

"So what do we do?" They seriously needed a plan knowing she wouldn't put up with them digging around behind her back about her new pet project. She had made that abundantly clear.

Kevin's grin brought a twinkle to his eye, "Well, we don't have probable cause to shoot him yet, and we might not be able to dig into his background, but that doesn't mean someone else can't."

Javi smiled perceptively, "You know any good private D's?"

Ryan grabbed his jacket and jerked his head toward the elevator, "Come on. I think I might now a guy."

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The two-way glass shielded no one from what was going on inside that room. The four walls that surrounded him had over the course of the last six days become his existence and his reality. Rather than feeling confined by their proximity, he perceived the comfort and protection that they offered just by being. They were constant and stable and he could count on their unalterable nature, to continue to be what they were when the same could not be said for much else in his life.

"Rick, it's time for your next dose." The voice of the med tech that had just entered the room sounded almost lyrical to him.

"What's in this one?" He asked because it was a part of him to do so, not because knowing would actually change anything.

The tech smiled at him. She was tall and pretty with long brown hair and green eyes that didn't bother to veil her interest in him, "We gonna do this every time, Rick?"

"Humor me." His approachable grin didn't waver, but his irises flared as his pupils dilated with recognition that reached somewhere far beyond that room .

"You are getting another hit of Lisdexamfetamine with a kicker of Scopolamine my sexy friend," the easy regularity of her voice soothed the inflamed neurological synapses in his brain. "That's quite the cocktail, Rick."

"Don't suppose you want to join me?" He felt a familiar burn as the drugs hit the IV line in his forearm temporarily distracting him.

This time she laughed, "Not hardly. The doctor will be here soon. She will take you where you need to go."

Castle sat with his legs dangling from the side of a gurney in the middle of a very grey room with very white lights aimed at him from every direction. He rightly surmised that for as many angles as there were lights, there were cameras trained to record every macro or nuanced action or expression he might make.

"What day is it?" He wondered if he asked that question every time she came to him as well.

Her expression gave nothing away, "Trying to figure out how long you have been here, Rick?"

He eyed her openly; struggling with his intellect to hold up his end of a very basic conversation, "Long enough for us to have a history, I hope."

Her eyes did not track to him as expected after his less than subtle come on, but to the mirror that took up more than half of the wall adjacent to him. When she didn't answer, he tried another tact.

"Tell me again what this cocktail is going to do for me?" He knew she had explained it all to him multiple times over an unknown number of days which had all been spent in that room, but for some inexplicable reason, he couldn't seem to hold on to it. The information slipped like water through his fingers with no retrieval option save asking all over again the next time she brought him another needle.

"The primary drug, Lisdexamfetamine, boosts your recall of events that you keep buried in your own personal mental vault." She paused and moved closer to him, practically standing between his partially spread knees. "And the Scopolamine, well, that makes you open to the ideas of others."

"Do you have some doctrine that I should be made aware of?" He was barely able to resist the urge to place his hands on her hips and draw her in.

Leaning closer her lips grazed his ear as she whispered, "It's not me you want, Rick. I know it and even drugged out of your mind - so do you."

He didn't respond- couldn't actually. Whatever interaction the two drugs she had given him were having, he was left to mentally spar with what is, what was, and what might have never been.

Seemingly satisfied she stepped away from him and recorded some data on his chart. Dismissing him entirely, she turned toward the two-way glass, "He's ready."


	6. Chapter 6 - Thanks for the Memories

Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot

Chapter 6 – Thanks for the Memories

 **A/N** \- Decided to make this a stand alone chapter. I know it is on the short side, but the tone did not fit with what comes before or after it. Additionally, though the research was done- much of the "science" is speculative at best. I worked with what the show gave me, the internet provided for free, and my own imagination. Finally, I had a little fun with the name of the doctor just because... A doctor who messes with peoples memories and emotions deserves a very special name. Enjoy - Flash

By the time the doctor finally finished the cognitive therapy component of the reboot of Castle's wiped consciousness, the wizards behind the two-way glass were getting restless and irritable. It had been a week since the process began, and those one hundred and sixty-eight hours represented operational clock time they could not recoup. The whole enterprise was a calculated gamble predicated on a practice most in the medical community considered highly experimental if not flat out pseudoscience. But if it worked, they actually had a shot at pulling this thing off. If it didn't, their odds dropped to single digits.

The door to the viewing room opened and Dr. Marlowe Amman entered stoically and quite obviously burdened by misgivings and reservations, "I've done all I can do within the time constraints."

"Does he remember?" Henry Jenkins stepped toward her, desperation furrowing his brow.

The doctor sighed heavily, "He does. Some of the minutia is still sketchy, but he knows what happened and his role in it."

Rita slithered soundlessly from the shadows, "Did the skill set rebound with the memory recapture?"

Marlowe smiled automatically, but there was no real warmth there, "I dampened his procedural memory at the time as well, so that is something we won't know until he is under legitimate stress. Theoretically, he should be able to access those skills because he remembers that he has them."

"Well, isn't that a theoretically comforting thought." Rita began pacing back and forth in front of the glass, her eyes darting around like a large animal caught in a very small cage.

Annoyed by the intelligence assets comment, the doctor continued, "You both need to understand something and be sure those on high do as well. We are way off the reservation on this one. It's been just shy of eighteen months since I buried this entire episode deep in the neurological stacks of his temporal cortex with the intent that it never be recovered."

Rita's eyes narrowed as she snarked, "Something came up."

Tensions were making their way to boil. Henry thought about stepping in, but decided to hold off wondering just how far this confrontation was going to go.

Amman's anger flared, "Do you even care that this man could suffer an irreversible psychotic break after everything I've done to him over the years?"

"He signed the waiver, just like you did, Doc. Just like we all did," she had no intention of backing down to a white coat who had never seen even one day of real action in her twenty-five plus years with the agency.

"You think because I don't carry a gun, I don't hold people's lives in my hands?" She stopped talking and walked to the two-way glass and pointed at Castle who was still in the room waiting for whatever was coming next.

Rita was taken aback slightly by what she saw when her eyes found the doctor's, "What I have done is tantamount to holding a loaded 9 millimeter with a hair trigger to that man's head. One misstep, a single faltering interpretation and his psyche is damaged beyond repair, and your last great hope for this operation spends the rest of his life playing Go Fish in a psych ward."

Henry stepped in before things could devolve any further, "Doctor, we get that. We also know you were the only person for this job. You're connected to Rick, more so than anyone here. You know him - his history. You are his memory. This wouldn't even be a possibility without you."

Rita's facial expression was reminiscent of one a child makes when she realizes her gum has lost its flavor, "What about Beckett?"

Both Jenkins and Marlowe looked at her quizzically, but the doctor replied, "What about her?"

"Did you do something with his memories of her?"

"What the hell are you talking about, Rita? She has nothing to do with this operation." There was an ever so slight tinge of panic in his voice.

"No, she doesn't, but he does, and everything he thinks, breathes and desires is controlled by his feelings for her," Rita's argument was sound and everyone in the room knew it. "They may not be together right now, but everything in him is trying to get her back. That kind of distraction could lead us all down roads we aren't prepared to deal with."

A sudden awareness morphed the expression on Henry's face from one of concern to incredulity and antipathy, "My god; it was you,"

Rita didn't miss a beat, "I don't know what you are talking about. Can we just get on with it?"

"Henry," Marlowe's attention was riveted by the commotion she saw cycling through his eyes, "What are you saying?"

A derisive intonation radiated through each word as he spoke, "She got to Beckett. She's why they split up."

Amman's eyes darted back and forth between the two colleagues who had suddenly become adversaries. She wasn't fully cognizant of their history with one another, but she knew from both of their expressions that Henry was right, "Rita? Is this true?"

"I don't know what you did or exactly how you pulled it off, but you did. You figured there was no way he would agree to this operation if they were still together."

There was nothing to be gained from continuing to lie, so she fessed up, "I simply chummed the water - it was up to Kate whether to take a bite."

"You knew she would," he challenged.

"Of course, I did. It's my job to know what people will do given a certain stimulus. And don't forget, Henry, it's yours too." She glanced at the clock. They were wasting time they did not have.

He ignored the challenge she had slung his way, "All he needed from her was a reason to stay. If you had left them alone, she might have given it to him."

Rita didn't hold back having finally had enough, "But she didn't! She decided independent of me that her marriage was not as important as bringing down LockSat. I did not make that choice. She did!"

"You've put her at risk," Amman made her accusation though she was somewhat rattled by the eruption of pure exasperation from the other woman.

'"Worst thing that will happen is she might wear herself out chasing leads that will go exactly nowhere. LockSat is regrouping and basically dormant." Rita's veins pulsed beneath her skin furious at having been put into a position to justify her motives and actions.

"For now," Henry filled in what he felt had been left unspoken.

"And isn't that all that really matters? Now is what has brought us all here!" She was losing patience with the entire line of discussion.

"You trashed not just his marriage, but his life. You try and act all bureau business like, but this is personal. You know it and so do we." It wasn't a very far leap for the doctor to make given the circumstances.

Rita scoffed sardonically, "You're calling me out for ruining lives? Isn't that what we do here on a daily? It's in the fine print of our contracts. Don't get too close to anyone because this job will fuck them up."

For the first time in the conversation, there didn't seem to be anything to say, but she glowered at them both which said quite enough.

Fury still smoldered intensely behind Jenkins' eyes, "Just so there is no confusion, I am going to make myself very clear. I'm lead on this operation and Castle's handler. No one will touch a single memory in his head regarding Kate Beckett – not one. I gave him my word."

"You're putting this mission in jeopardy by compromising it with emotion," she had found her voice. All anger had evaporated, but her assessment of the situation still took a swing at Jenkins.

He crossed to where she stood and stared down intently into her face, "No, Rita, you did that when you let me bring Rick in here willing to put everything on the line under false pretenses. You better pray he doesn't find out before this is over because with what he remembers now about who he is and what he's capable of – he'll probably kill you."


	7. Chapter 7 - Dream World

Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot

Chapter 7 – Dream World

 _ **A/N:**_ _This was a tricky chapter to write, but I'm going to throw it against the wall and see what sticks. Still don't know exactly where it is going to end up, but thanks for reading anyway. And a special thank you to Yoda for being a Jedi Beta for this chapter. Finally, I want to thank those who post thoughtful, insightful reviews. They are a key part of the process._

 _ **Disclaimer:**_ _Borrowed some lines directly from some early episodes of the show – I do not own them or claim them as my own. They belong to those people at ABC as do the characters and such._

X-x-X-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X

Richard Castle was at the bottom of a very deep well. Looking down at his feet, he watched about six inches of water lapping at his bare toes and dampening the ankles of his drawstring scrub pants to a darker shade of blue.

Staring up to where he could see a splash of light, he listened for any signs of life. "Can anyone hear me?" he called out in a voice scratchy with strain. "Is anyone out there?"

The answer he received was nothing more than the wind, which offered no solace given the circumstances. Reaching out in front of him, he pushed against the cold, slime-covered rock that made up the walls of his prison. His fingertips burned like they were on fire, and he yanked them back reflexively.

"What the hell," the words echoed back and forth across and through him.

His eyes fixated on the ends of his fingers trying to assess the damage. Half expecting to find them blistered and bleeding, he was stunned to be unable to detect any damage. There was no redness, no welts; no wound of any kind. His mind began to ask questions.

It was then he heard her calling, delivering his name on the spiraling breeze that had made it down the shaft to him. Before he could answer back, awareness of some variation in the movement of the water seduced his attention. What had been at only his ankles seconds before was now caressing his hips. Where was it all coming from?

"Castle…" It was her. He would recognize the sound of his name from her voice under any circumstances.

She had come for him just like they always had for one another, "Beckett, I'm down here."

The water began advancing more swiftly and was soon at chest level. He succumbed to the impulse to tread water finding that every time he took his feet off the bottom, he sunk like the proverbial stone. Jamming his heels back under him, he scoured the wall desperate for a place to grab on and hoist himself up. One minute he would think he saw something that might help and the next it would be gone before he could even try and grapple for it.

Once at neck level the water sloshed into his eyes and open mouth as he struggled to stay above it. It was briny and burned his throat on the way down while blurring his vision making it impossible to think and formulate some plan of self-deliverance.

"Beckett, where are you?" The despair in his voice reflected that of his circumstance. There was no supplementary answer to his plea, no call, no rescue, only walls and more water.

When his head was finally covered, he scratched and clawed against the stones of the towering prison that held him in stasis trying to gain even an inch of ground against it. The vastness in height and the icy smoothness of its surface persuaded him of the futility of continuing to fight a battle already lost. The suffocating thickness of the water's hold on him was unbreakable, and he understood with blinding clarity that the walls would never come down magnifying a truth that had been there all along. Continuing to fight was of no use. He would never be enough to break through.

Time was lost to him but it continued to pass. He would never be able to tell anyone how much had washed away when fatigue won out and final acceptance that the battle would not be his overtook him, and he gave himself to the water. A vast array of thoughts and emotions rushed him with memories loosely attached and giving chase. He tried to grab them like he had the handholds he thought he had seen in the wall, but they were equally as elusive.

It was only then that he realized that he was not drowning – at least not in the most ordinary sense. His mind was telling him that he was submerged at the base of a very deep, salt water filled well that he could not get out of, but he was still alive.

Something wasn't right, not normal about this trap, this water. Something wasn't right about him. His mind began asking the questions it had abandoned some time before when the water had begun to rise.

It asked the most important one first – Where was Beckett?

His eyes closed involuntarily and that was when he saw her. She was huddled on the ground against a wall in an icy cold room with someone wrapped tightly around her. His mind rewound itself to look again. No, wait; it wasn't a room. It was a refrigerated cargo container. He stepped closer and realized that he was the one with her trying desperately to keep her warm – to keep her alive. They were whispering to one another, but her words thundered around in his skull.

"I can't feel anything. I always thought, being a cop, I'd take a bullet. Never thought I'd freeze to death," Kate's words were slow and stilted from the cold.

"Hey, w…we're not dead yet," he tried to give her some hope.

"I just wish this was one of your books and you could rewrite the ending," he could barely hear her then, but the words continued to bang around like a hammer in his brain. What if he could rewrite the ending or better yet change it all together by redrafting key events from the beginning and the middle? It could all be so different now. They would be different. And maybe…just maybe, he wouldn't be here – wherever the fuck here was - and she wouldn't have left him for reasons he couldn't even begin to fathom.

He had missed much of the conversation lost in his musings, but he reminded himself that he already knew how it went.

"Castle, no. Okay? Shhh. You were right. We found the bomb. We were just too late, okay?" She was fading. He remembered that too and it hurt him now just as it had then, "Castle, thank you...for being there."

"Always," he mouthed the words with his doppelganger.

"I just want you to know how much I...how much I love you," and with those words she succumbed to unconsciousness and the cold.

"Stay with me, Kate. I love you, too. I love you, Kate."

With those last words, Castle found himself being flung against the walls that encased him. Air he shouldn't still have in his lungs jettisoned from the blow. The symptoms of suffocation returned and he fought them out of instinct and self-preservation, not because it was his own personal desire.

" _What is he doing?" The voice he heard asking the question in his head was unfamiliar and sounded very far away and muted as though it was covered with blankets._

" _He's trying to change history," a second voice he knew he recognized, but could not quite place answered calmly, and there was sadness behind it._

" _Would it really be so terrible to give him that?" The first voice was much younger and more hopeful than the second._

" _We are not here to change this man's history, our goal is simply to recover what he chose to bury." The rebuke was curt and final and way far distant to him._

Suddenly he was standing in the middle of the street staring into the back of a van whose back doors had been flung open to reveal a bomb. The timer was counting down while Beckett yelled into a phone, "Fallon, do you have any idea how to diffuse a bomb?"

Castle watched himself almost wishing he had popcorn since he already knew how this movie would end, "One minute!"

"I sent you a picture. It's uploading now!" The desperation and fear in her tone mirrored that on her face.

The timer continued to tick down, "I can't see it!" Fallon would not be able to save them, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"Castle," her hand in his and his name on her lips, so close to being her last.

He yanked the wires in a last ditch attempt to save them – to save her. When they opened their eyes, they were still holding hands, "Castle!"

Before he could let loose the emphatic YEEESSS that welled up in his chest, she kissed him. It took him a moment to realize what was happening and begin to kiss her back with abandon and unrestrained passion.

" _He's doing it again," the dominant voice in the conversation began barking out orders. "Eliminate the_ _Lisdexamfetamine!"_

 _The other snapped back, "It was stopped over an hour ago!"_

" _Damn it, we aren't bringing back these memories, he is, and he's trying to change them. I've never seen anything like this happen before._ _We have to stop him!" The doctor's panic was so sharp it cut through the room, but to Castle it sounded more like the white noise from an old television set left on after the station had signed off for the night._

 _There was anxiety and a bit of protective defiance edged into the assistant's reply, "You said he was at his saturation point with these drugs."_

 _The doctor's anger slashed wildly back at her, "If you can't follow orders, I will bring someone in who can."_

The argument faded, and there she was again. This time she was standing outside of the conference room at the 12th. She was trying to tell him something before he left for the Hamptons for the summer to write, "What's up?"

"Look... I know that I'm not the easiest person to get to know, and I don't always let on what's on my mind. But this past year, working with you, I've had a really good time," the words felt strained with the moment and had not come easily to her.

"Yeah, me too," he thought looking back now that his face had looked far too hopeful.

"So, I'm- I'm just gonna say this and…," Beckett's words were cut off by the voice of another woman.

"Richard? You ready?" the blonde had sidled up to him possessively that day making his departure a little less painful for him. She may have had Detective Demming, but he wasn't going to be alone either.

"Hey, Gina. Umm, Beckett, you remember Gina, my ex-wife?" Castle's body began to tremor ever so slightly as he recalled every nuance that crossed her face, every movement of her eyes and restless hands.

In that moment he knew it, though he hadn't realized it before. There had been something left unsaid between them that day that could have changed everything.

Castle led his memory to the end, "Yeah. So... I'm sorry. You were, uh, you were telling me something."

Beckett faltered just like she always did when she was afraid, "Yeah, I wanted to say, have a great summer."

"You too. And like you said, it's- it's been really, really great," he kicked himself again for those inane banal pleasantries.

"Yeah, it has." She looked so hurt, so lost; how could he have missed it?

Watching himself shake Beckett's hand, wave to the others watching from the conference room and walk away with Gina was sheer torture until Beckett called out to him, "Rick, ask me one more time."

He froze in his tracks so suddenly, Gina traveled several steps past him before she stopped and turned to see what was going on, "Ask you what?" There was confusion mired in promise on his face.

Acknowledging Gina's discomfort with only a brief glance and dismissal, Beckett closed the gap between them, "Ask me to go with you."

"To the Hamptons?" He was clearly taken aback and fumbled his words.

"Yes, to the Hamptons," she stared directly into his eyes letting him see the seriousness in hers.

"What about Demming?" He was struggling with the turn of events.

She shook her head and grabbed both of his hands with her own, "We broke up."

"You what? When? Weren't you two going away together this weekend?" Castle tried to make sense of the sudden shift in fortune.

"Yes. No. I couldn't." It felt so good to tell him the truth.

Understanding began spreading across his face and his heart began thudding maniacally in his chest, "Come with me, Kate."

Tears filled her eyes, but that did not keep her from hearing the cheer that went up from the conference room when she said yes and suddenly found herself wrapped in his embrace and sharing a kiss that neither of them would ever forget.

" _That is not how it happened, Rick, you know that you spent that summer in the Hamptons with Gina finishing your book," the voice he had come to think of as reason pulled him back from the brink._

Without any transition at all, he found himself sitting at her bedside in the hospital after she had been shot; flowers still in hand, "Every time I close my eyes, I see Montgomery lying on the hangar floor. You should have let me go in there, Rick."

"They would have killed you," he countered still believing in the truth of the statement.

"You don't know that," she was angry with him.

He rewound the same awful day even further back, "I hear you tried to save me."

"You heard? You don't remember me tackling you?" He felt again as he had right then.

"No, I don't remember much of anything," he didn't believe her or maybe it was because now he knew better. "I remember that I was on the podium, and I remember everything just going black.

"You don't know what I said to you after you were shot?" Blood began rushing in his ears causing a dizzying sensation and the taste of salt invaded his mouth.

She looked at him watchfully as though the ball were in his court, so he continued, "I told you how I feel about you, Kate. I told you that I love you. That I'm in love with you."

The next few seconds existed in slow motion only in the memory he was trying to construct. Her trembling hand hesitated and then reached for him, but once it found his, there was no going back, "I know. I heard you. I heard it all."

The air in the room felt flash heated, and he began to sweat waiting for her to continue, "I do too, Rick. I love you too."

He tried desperately to hold on to the image to see what could have happened next, but the voices wouldn't let him.

" _Beckett sent you away that day, Castle. She stayed with Josh and you didn't hear from her for months." There was no gratification in the voice that utilized the powerful suggestibility of the drug he had been given to remap the memory to its correct path._

"She didn't choose me," he was evidently talking to himself, so the guiding voice remained silent and waited for what might come next.

 _The second kinder voice chose to speak, "Not then, Rick, but she did eventually."_

He smiled and the water receded enough to where his nose and mouth cleared it and his breathing came more easily. "Where is she?" He was back to the question that started it all.

 _The guiding voice stepped back in, "She's probably at home. It's late."_

The water drew even further back and pooled at waist level, "She's at the loft. I have to go. She's probably worried wondering where I am."

 _The voice continued to deal the merciless truth out to him, "No, Castle, she's not waiting for you. Kate doesn't live at the loft with you anymore."_

He lashed out with flailing limbs against the remaining water and the suggestion, even though the truth of it ran straight through him, "You're lying!"

 _The water was completely gone having disappeared as abruptly as it came leaving only the voice, "You signed the divorce papers and left them with Alexis before you came here."_

His thoughts tumbled over one another knotting into a painful fist, "She said she had some things to work out."

" _That's right. You did nothing wrong," the voice was trying to sooth him realizing that his subconscious would soon recede back in the recesses where it belonged._

"There's something going on that she doesn't want me to know about," he said it as though it were not mere speculation, but a certainty.

 _The younger voice blurted without processing the possible ramifications of making a suggestion to a subject under the effect of Scopolamine that had not been fully vetted as she had been taught, "Maybe she is just trying to protect you."_

In a turn of thought that almost gave him mental whiplash, Castle found himself standing in Beckett's old apartment with his back to her mother's murder board begging her to give up the hunt. He had just told her about Smith and the deal Montgomery had made to keep her safe and that the only reason she was still alive was because she had stopped hunting for her mother's killer after she was shot.

"How do you know this?" He could still see the incredulity and betrayal on her face.

"In order for the deal to work, someone had to make sure you weren't pursuing it," he remembered how hard it had been to try and explain.

Whispering from the shock, "Are you a part of this?"

"I was just trying to keep you safe." It had been the truth. There had been nothing in it for him except that he would not lose her.

"By lying to me about the most important thing in my life?" Fury was mottled with disbelief.

"That lie was the only thing protecting you." He found himself on the defensive, but held fast to the belief that he had been right.

"Castle, I didn't need protection. I needed a lead. And you sat on it for a year. Now, who is this person? How do I find him?" She had geared into interrogation mode.

He filtered through much of the argument in fast forward, his mind slowing when he came to this, "Every morning I bring you a cup of coffee just so that I can see a smile on your face because I think you are the most remarkable, maddening, challenging, frustrating person I have ever met. And I love you Kate, and if that means anything to you, if you care about me at all, just don't do this.

"If I care about you, Castle? You cut a deal for my life like I'm some kind of a child. My life. Mine. You don't get to decide!" The words that had sent him from the room that day propelled him back to this one in the present.

His eyes popped open, he sat bolt upright and sucked in the air around him like a starving man. He was in the same room he had been in for god only knew how long. There was no well in sight and the only salt water to be had was the sweat he lay drenched in. "She's found a new case to drive her. One she chose not to share with me even after we promised one another there would be no more secrets." He had thrown off his equilibrium when he had sat up on the gurney too fast. The only reason he didn't end up on the floor was because two sets of strong hands got to him in time.

Focusing on them, the faces belonging to the pair of voices who had been in his head looked at him with sympathy and kindness, but the one he recognized – the one he had termed the guiding voice – told it to him like it is one last time. "You are both driven by your past, your demons, Rick. You recognized it in one another and it has bound you together until now."

He glanced once more into the two-way glass wondering how many eavesdroppers would hear and catalog for future use the words he was about to utter, "Kate had a choice to make and it wasn't me. Whatever "more" has her chasing it this time is more vital to her happiness than our life together. She's shut me out, left me, and is lying to me, and the reason why doesn't even matter anymore. That's what it comes down to, isn't it?"

The door to the room banged against the wall behind it when it was forcefully shoved open and Rita came in followed by an anxious Henry Jenkins, "You're exactly right, Castle. Kate chooses Kate, you choose Kate, hell, everybody chooses Kate – tell me – when is it going to be your turn?"

Dr. Amman was livid, "Neither of you should be anywhere near him, until everything clears his system. He is still in a highly suggestible state. There's no predicting the possible ill effects of this unauthorized intrusion."

"Now." Castle's voice was low and it seemed to have risen up from somewhere deep within his being.

"What was that?" Rita had heard him the first time and so had everyone else, but she wanted to highlight the moment.

Castle had dropped his eyes to stare at the floor when they came in. A thought, no a memory, a true one, had come back with him from somewhere very deep inside his psyche.

He was at the loft with Martha and her words resonated with a perceptive truth, "It's complicated, so you say. Only, it's not. It's not. Nobody's tomorrows are guaranteed, right? Wouldn't it be better to tell her, even if the timing is wrong, than never to tell her at all?"

"And what if she isn't ready?" That question still haunted him, as did her answer.

"Then she never will be. Then you move on."

When he looked up, the foggy thoughts and unclear edges of memory and wishful thinking had been expelled from his mind. The expression that remained on his face, the harder set of his eyes and line of his jaw illuminated the conversion. Rita, Henry, and Marlowe recognized the man who now sat before them. He was who they had been looking for.

The young tech that had helped throughout the arduous week long process was still in the room and saw the transformation too. The man she saw before her now was not the same as the one she had laughed with, told jokes to and connected with before this all began. She could not find that man in the countenance of the one who now sat before her, and she had serious doubts that anyone from his life outside of this place would be able to either.


	8. Chapter 8 - Paperwork

Whisky-Tango-Foxtrot (WTF)

Chapter 8 – Paperwork

Javi and Ryan jockeyed for position to see who would be first off the elevator on the floor of the building that led to Richard Castle Investigations. It had been more than ten days since either of them had heard from him and an uneasy anxiety ran rampant beneath shaky facades and hollow platitudes that served only to sharpen an already keen-edged intuition that the time to sit around waiting for answers had passed them by long before this visit.

It was unlike Castle to disappear from the grid of the 12th precinct for more than a couple of days at a time, and it seemed especially out of character now that the cop-shop was about the only place the man had any hope of seeing Beckett. Her abrupt departure from their loft and marriage several weeks before under the guise of a tenuously outlined need for time, had left everyone unsettled and harboring questions that up to this point, no one had dared to ask.

As they approached the outer office door, the boys slowed their pace. Ryan couldn't help but let optimism divert his more shadowy thoughts about what might be up with his friend to a scenario that found Castle at his desk playing with one of his P.I. gadgets pretending that he was working on a case.

"Whoa, bro. There's someone in there with little Castle. Hold up." Javi cut off Kevin's musing with a whisper and a finger to his own lips to keep him quiet.

"I'm just the messenger young lady, and you know what they usually say." The voice was female and one they did not recognize.

The detectives made their way quietly toward Castle's inner office door as soundlessly as possible without trying to appear that they were sneaking around.

"I'm not going to shoot you, yet." Alexis' tone made it clear that she was not the least bit intimidated by the interaction.

The unfamiliar voice laughed softly, "You're just like him."

"My father?" Alexis queried.

The dark haired woman smiled as she turned to leave, "Yeah, him too."

Alexis took several steps in the same direction, "What did you mean when you said I needed to be prepared for him to be different?"

"There are events in life that irrevocably change people." There was no humor or playfulness in her face now.

"Is he okay? I need to know." The girl had reflexively reached out to grab the arm of the retreating woman.

Her visitor looked down at the hand resting on her forearm and back up into worried crystal blue eyes, "He is."

"He's coming home, right?" She sounded like a scared little girl to the messenger.

Setting aside everything she knew about the rules of engagement, the visitor placed her hand over the younger woman's, "I'm not in the habit of making promises that I can't keep. I'm here right now because of one I made to your father to let you know he is all right."

Alexis began to tear and it angered her for some reason to show weakness in front of this uninvited guest.

"If I know anything, I know this. Your dad would do anything for you. Fight anyone to keep you safe and go through hell to get back to you. He's done it before."

"You aren't answering my question," she couldn't help but force the issue. She was desperate.

The woman reached up and pushed a stray hair maternally back from the girl's face, "It's all I've got, kid."

Having long since detected the presence of the two NYPD detectives lurking in the outer office; Rita continued moving toward the door, "Remember what I said."

She nodded, "I'll be here for him and so will Gram."

Her eyes lit up brightly, "Of that I have no doubt, Ms. Castle." Her demeanor and focus shifted abruptly, but fluidly, "You can come in now, gentlemen."

Kevin and Javi stepped into the room guiltless with curiosity. Javi eyed the dark eyed stranger carefully, "I don't think we have had the pleasure."

Eyes still sparkling, Rita engaged again, but only briefly, "If we had there would be no doubt, Detective Esposito."

Kevin snickered and by the time Javi had delivered a withering rebuke with a cut of his eyes and turned back, the woman was gone.

Ryan's unease caused him to speak up first. He nodded in the direction of the door, "Who was that?"

Alexis had never been quite able to develop her own poker face into one that was useful with people who actually knew her, "No one important. What are you guys doing here? Got a case Richard Castle Investigations can help with?"

Espo had managed to pull his attention back to the issue at hand and proceeded to word his next question carefully to avoid setting off her defenses, "Speaking of…where is your pops? He's not answering our calls."

"I'm not really sure right this minute." It wasn't actually a lie, but the flush that began spreading across her chest just below her throat indicated otherwise.

Kevin walked back toward Castle's desk, surveying anything that might be of interest and in plain sight, "What about your friend? She seemed to know something about him."

Alexis' voice took on a slightly shrill quality, "She's not my friend. I never met her before today."

"So, she's not a client," Espo was trying to box her in.

Inexperience had caused her to catch on too late, "Yes, well, no, she was here to deliver a message."

"For Castle?" Ryan continued scanning the desk area. When he locked on the large manila envelope whose contents appeared very legal in nature, he checked in visually with Javi who made his own way over to see what had caught his partner's interest.

Alexis realized what was happening and reached across the desk hoping to snag the envelope and its personal and very revealing subject matter before things really got away from her, "No. The message was for me."

The sincere concern in Kevin's voice garnered her attention and slowed her movement just long enough, "Something is going on, and we know you know what it is."

Espo cycled through a vast array of emotions when he saw what had everyone so edged out, "What the hell is this?"

The heavy sigh from her was full of resignation and no small amount of relief that the secret she had been carrying alone for the last week and a half was not just hers anymore, "Paper work. Lots of paper work."

X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X

Beckett is on fire. Heat sluices through her system as she clutches him tightly to her bare body. She reeks of gnawing aching need that captivates each of his senses independently and collectively sending hands grappling and fingers digging into skin with raking nails and searing breaths that run hot and ragged.

Open and begging, gyrating hips and undulating thighs urge him closer to the hollowed out parts of her he craves. His name escapes lips buried deep in the well of his neck, "Castle."

His response is primal and driven by yearning that is rising up from deep within and is a match for hers. He is overwhelmed by it, and lets it take him as he takes her.

In that moment, she gives herself to him without reservation, nothing is held back. He is a part of her and she him. They move together in natural perfection as though there has never been or could ever be anyone else for either of them.

She opens her eyes to find him gazing into them, and is able to discern that he sees through her walls, looks beyond her past, and stands ready to battle with her the demons that still drive her. She flinches inwardly, futilely resisting these moments while voracious, covetous greed for them has her grasping outward as they torment her. This is when she is most vulnerable to what she feels for him. He sees her - truly sees her - and loves her anyway and she wonders how that can possibly be.

It is also in this place of abandon that her love for him exerts its dominance making it impossible for her to compartmentalize and preside over her feelings as she has managed to do with the ones that came before him. Every emotion that matters is either made up completely of him or tethered to him in some way and it terrifies and exhilarates all at the same time.

Katherine Beckett had never intended to allow herself to feel this way about any man. The loss of her mother had been the greatest pain of her life. The dysfunction brought to her existence battling the alcoholism that brought down her father after her mother's murder solidified a resolve that dictated that she never allow herself to be put in a position to feel that way again. Yet, here she was being force to her metaphorical knees with feelings of heartache and desolation over a man she never wanted to love, but could not resist.

It did not matter that when she sent him away she had chosen this path. The blade still sliced just as deeply leaving the same serrated wound tract that chance would have. In time, this too would scar and leave with her yet another reminder why the possibility of losing people she could not just walk away from would always be what had the power to break her, to finish her, and she just couldn't allow that to happen.

Something from the external world invaded Kate's subconscious tarriance, "Beckett, we need to talk to you."

It took several seconds for the captain to jostle her consciousness even somewhat free from the powerful tendrils of the dream she had been having on the couch in her office. Javi and Kevin were standing in front of her as she swung her legs around and planted her feet back on the ground firmly reminding herself that was where they belonged.

Seeing the look on their faces, Kate was glad that she had closed the blinds before taking the short rest. She had been spending many nights there recently and it was beginning to take its toll, "Give me a second."

Kevin had opened his mouth to protest, but dropped it when he caught sight of the turbulence swirling within his partner's expression. Javi had never been one to question Beckett especially when it came to Castle. But this time, some line in the sand had been crossed for him, and she might not be quite prepared for what she was about to hear.

Javi didn't give her more than the second she had asked for. "Where is Castle?"

The edge in his voice was one she had heard before, but not when it had been directed at her, "Working on a case I would guess."

Offended by how easily she lied to him, he continued almost recklessly, "When's the last time you saw or talked to him?"

"You interrogating me, Espo?" The muscles across her shoulders involuntarily tightened.

Kevin couldn't keep silent any longer; "We know he's been gone for more than ten days, and that you've been aware of it since day one."

She looked from one of the men and then back to the other uncertain what to do next, "I don't know where he is."

"And knowing Castle, that doesn't concern you?" Ryan's resentment was almost a palpable presence in the room.

Beckett didn't answer him because she couldn't without breaking down, but he didn't see it that way, "How do you do it?"

Her face was stoic and unreadable, but her insides were gutting themselves as though they were in a blender.

"How do you live with it?" The detective was just this side of losing it. "You leave him with no real explanation, break his heart, watch him try desperately to get you back and when he disappears, you could give a fuck."

Javi stepped in and spoke softly to him, "Give me a minute with her, bro."

Kevin's face was beet red and his stared bounced erratically back and forth between his partner and his captain, "Yeah, fine, whatever, I was done with her anyway."

The relief Kate felt when Ryan left her office was readily apparent on her face and in her body language, "Thanks, Espo. He was really out of line."

Javi took a deep breath, "No, I don't think so. The problem is that right now I don't know if I can believe a word you say."

She looked surprised. "What? I thought that…"

He interrupted her unable to stop himself, "You thought what? That I would be on your side like always; ready to take a swipe at Castle like I usually do?"

His attack took her off balance and she was suddenly reeling, "No, that's not what I meant. I just…"

"You just what; haven't had time to come up with a good enough lie yet?" Fury was smeared all over his face.

"You don't understand what is at stake here, Javi." Rationalizing wasn't going to make it any better, but she wasn't sure what other avenues were available to her given the circumstances.

He shook his head and he looked suddenly mournful, "No, Kate, it's you that doesn't understand what's at stake. You had it all: a new challenge as captain to run this place the right way, a husband who adored you, and your mother's murder was finally put to rest. Did you ever stop for one second and consider how lucky that made you after everything that's happened?"

Each word he said was true, and it made sense on paper, but not in her head. Kate wished she could make him understand, "There's more going on here than you know."

Espo laughed harshly, "You think? Well, let me tell you what I do know. You have found another bad guy to chase and you're using Vikram to do it instead of us for some reason."

"It's not that simple and you know it," she argued suddenly very much in the moment and out of her head.

"It is that simple. You cut me and Ryan out just the way you cut Castle out, only that makes no sense because all these cases we've solved over the years have been as a team. Now there is no team. There's just you and Vikram, me and Ryan, and Castle."

He took a breath weighing what was coming next, "I bet you even think you are protecting us from whatever you're into, but you're not. You can't. We are all in it because of our shared history. You push him away and freeze us out, but you can't rewrite the past. Any backlash that comes looking for you will come for us too only we won't see it coming." He was shaking with rage and that's when she saw something in his eyes she never had before that caused her breath to catch in her throat.

Just then the door to the office was flung open and Vikram Sighn came through it waving a file around like it was a golden ticket, "Beckett, I must speak with you."

Javi turned to face him, "Get out. This is a private family matter."

Sighn did not miss the heavy emphasis on the word family, "Kate, this is time sensitive. We've got to move on it now."

Trying to regain her focus and equilibrium was made a thousand times more difficult when she noticed that Espo had a manila envelope of his own in his left hand. Icy realization crept over and through her, "Where did you get that?"

"Alexis asked me to drop it off. Said you forgot it at the office…ten days ago." The accusation was clear and a direct hit.

Both men watched her expectantly, waiting for her to make a choice and when she did, he felt no more reason to protect or defend her actions, "Look, Kate, it's your life and you get to live it any way you want to when no one else is depending on you."

Sighn looked uncomfortable with the conversation, but showed no sign of withdrawing, "Can you finish this later?"

He took two steps toward her, "No, I can't."

The analyst was determined to get her focus on him and whatever he had found, "We don't have time for this."

Conflicting emotions scrambled her thoughts, "Javi, I can't do this right now."

"Look, whatever it is this time has you throwing the last eight years of your life away. If that's what you want to do fine, but what's not okay is that you keep stringing Castle along with the same empty promises of happily ever after you have been plying him with for the last 3 years. You owe him more than that. He deserves better." He tossed the envelope and its contents haphazardly on her desk and the papers inside came sliding out.

Vikram's eyes fell on them briefly and grew wide with a combination of emotions all related to surprise and shock, but he didn't say anything else.

"You and I both know that after this, there will be another case, another bad guy who needs to be brought to justice and you'll sideline him again while you do what you feel you need to. And the really sad thing is, he'll probably just take it because the guy is crazy in love with you."

"You have no idea what you're talking about," the bitterness in her words could not block out the truth.

"Do the right thing, Kate. Let him go. Enough is enough." Espo watched her stare at the papers on the desk as though it were a nest of spiders.

Realizing that suddenly he was way past done and had nothing left to say, he turned toward the door where Ryan stood waiting with approval embedded deeply in his face.

It was Kevin's turn to speak his mind and he took it, "You ended your marriage the day you walked out on it for whatever it is you got going with computer boy over there. You tried to end our relationship with him too for some reason, and I'm ashamed that I almost let you. Now Castle's gone AWOL again - by choice this time - and considering whom he left with, there's decent chance he's not going to make it back. Seems to me all that's left for you is the paper work. Sign. File them with the court. Take home your copy. Maybe it will keep you warm at night."

"Guys, wait!" Her pleas fell on deaf ears and minds that had been changed by a set of complicated circumstances where no one really had the whole story.

Vikram approached cautiously after the boys left the office, "You okay?"

"No, I'm not," Kate shoved the envelope and its contents from the desk onto the floor. "What do you have?"

"We got a location on a current supplier of the drugs from the Vulcan Simmons bust," Vikram had not known her long, but knew her well enough to say just the right thing.

Beckett's eyes left him and tracked the boys as they had taken their jackets and were headed toward the elevator, "Show me."

Vikram followed her line of sight and found himself watching them too, "They're going after him, aren't they?"

"That's a pretty safe bet," her voice was unsteady and tense.

"Maybe they will find him and bring him back," he offered a bit of hope.

"He doesn't want to be found," of that she was certain.

Vikram chuckled, "He's just a mystery writer. How hard can it be?"

He realized his miscalculation of boundaries too late to avoid the fist that plowed into his left jaw with all the force of a jackhammer. Vikram hit the ground hard and it took a few seconds for him to clear his head enough to begin to regain his bearings.

Beckett's dispassionate expression held no regret or apology as she leaned down and picked the file up off the floor where he had dropped it. She stepped over his prone form and moved toward the door without a backward glance, "You might want to put some ice on that."


	9. Chapter 9 - Hampton Heat

Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot (WTF)

Chapter 9 – Hampton Heat

Beckett pressed her shoulders into the wall of the elevator craving some release from the tension that roped through them. It was 5:00 AM and the all-nighter she had just pulled with Vikram hoping to find another piece of the puzzle that would lead her closer to the tangled root system of LockSat had yielded nothing but a couple of low-level nobodies she had just dumped on narcotics for booking.

Vikram stood silently beside her taking note of the taut posture and clenched jawline. He was anticipating some time away from her and the whole disastrous operation they had been a part of over the last fourteen hours. He needed it. He had to figure out where things went wrong before the influx of the day shift around 7:00 AM would make that impossible with the start of another day submerged in the mundane. However, that was not to be.

The early morning quiet usually present in the bullpen hung heavily in the room as the two of them stepped out and into its suffocating thickness. The entire space appeared frozen or at least the people in it did. Kate shifted gears mentally and emotionally as any fatigue and appetite for sleep evaporated with the intake of a single breath.

Vikram was at her heel, but he ceased to exist in the moments that followed. The eyes of every officer in homicide were glued to the various television monitors around the room in a kind of shocked freeze frame. A voice she recognized, but did not immediately place, resonated off of every available surface filling it with artificial sound. "An anonymous report came into Hampton's PD around 1:00 AM this morning. Fire, rescue and police were dispatched to the scene where the ocean front home of Richard Castle was discovered fully engulfed. It was determined that entry into the home was inadvisable, and all efforts were put into ensuring the fire did not spread down the beach to other structures."

A flurry of questions from reporters interrupted Chief Brady, but he held up a calming hand and continued to read from the prepared statement in front of him, "The fire was brought under control and extinguished. Investigators were able to then enter the structure."

An intense roaring surge of blood pressure pulsated through her ears forcing Beckett deeper into what was quickly becoming an all-consuming abyss. She stepped tentatively closer to the largest monitor which was mounted high on the wall in the center of the squad room afraid that each subsequent word from the man on the screen would be the one that left her on her knees. She felt the gazes from many in the room veer to her as they became aware of her presence, but no one moved or said a word.

The chief continued his live briefing, "A thorough search of the rubble has resulted in the recovery of a single victim."

The crush of reporters had remained docile and compliant as long as they could. Their voices pummeled each other for dominance for several seconds before one finally rose above the din of the rest, "Is Richard Castle dead?"

As though the voice of one was the voice for all, they fell silent waiting for the answer that would change everything about how they approached the story.

An emotion Kate registered as disconsolation on the face of Brady could never prepare her for the answer he had to deliver, "Due to extensive burns, we are not at this time able to conclusively identify the victim of this fatality."

Another voice seized his opportunity, "Can you rule out the possibility that the body in that house is Mr. Castle?"

The lead officer who was suddenly in charge of a case he never saw coming seemed to search his prepared notes for a way to answer, but there was nothing there that could help him. He shook his head and tried to formulate the words more than once before they finally came, "No. At this time, investigators cannot rule out the possibility that the deceased is Richard Castle."

The voices of the reporters swelled again making it difficult for anyone to hear anything, "There are reports that he was spotted in town last night."

That general statement allowed the chief to regain some composure, "That's right. He was seen at several stores late in the evening, and I spoke with him personally as he was having dinner at a local restaurant around 10:00 PM."

Ryan and Esposito muttered simultaneous yet dissonant epithets under their breath, "How did we miss him?"

"One hour. One stinking hour earlier, we were there," Espo caught sight of Beckett out of the corner of his eye.

Ryan saw her a split second later. He was angry still, but what they had found out on their impromptu excursion to the Hamptons in search of the wayward P.I. earlier in the day mitigated it somewhat. There they had been met with undeniable evidence that she did still care; startling proof that even though they couldn't see it on the surface and her actions toward him were contrary to the premise, she was being torn apart on the inside by his absence. "Beckett, we don't know for sure it's him."

Javi's ire had abated a bit as well though he still didn't understand exactly what was going on, "That's right. It could be anyone. Someone could have broken in and burned themselves up when they set the place on fire."

She looked at them, both of them, unable to speak. Her eyes went back to the screen as the press conference continued, "Due to the high profile nature of the possible victim and the complexity of the case that is developing, I have asked the mayor of New York for his support with this case."

"Exactly what do you mean by support?" The reporters had become a swarm of faceless and nameless vultures to Brady though he was sure he knew each one by sight and family.

"I mean that Mr., umm, the body is being shipped back to the city where there are considerably more resources available to ensure that answers to what happened here are found quickly," the man looked traumatized and about to break.

It was then that all interest in the police chief dematerialized both on screen and in the squad room. EMT's were exiting the husk of the house with a gurney between them escorting the remains of whoever had died in the inferno.

A lone reporter seized the lull and put the question out there that had been left hanging in the air unasked since the press conference had begun, "Is it possible that what happened here is connected to Mr. Castle's still unexplained disappearance last year?"

Another followed it up quickly since the door had been opened, "There were reports of gun shots about the time the house fire began. Is there a chance the two incidents are related?"

Chief Brady began to back away from the throng with an expression that hid nothing from anyone who cared to look closely enough; "I am not able to comment on that at this time."

The video minimized in the left hand corner of the screen and a high profile New York news anchor took over, "This story from our sister station in South Hampton broke just a few hours ago, and we are about to go live with the mayor outside the medical examiner's office here in Manhattan where he is waiting to escort the remains of what may well be his long time friend Richard Castle to autopsy."

The mayor's expression was somber and strained. He stood tall with a focused gaze yet unsettled voice, "When tragedy strikes, New Yorkers come together. When an injustice occurs, we rise up and fight back. When we lose one of our own, we bring him home."

The reporters ignited with questions, "Are you saying that you believe the body in that bag is Richard Castle."

"What I believe is of little significance at this time. What is important is finding out the truth and giving this man's family closure and that is why we brought him back here so quickly."

"Who will be performing the autopsy? Isn't Dr. Parish a close friend of the Castle's?" The reporter who asked was somewhere mired in the middle of the pack.

The mayor nodded as though he had been expecting the question and had prepared for it, "Doctor Sidney Perlmutter will be performing the autopsy. He has expertise dealing with bodies with this kind of… this kind of…" he paused almost unable to continue, but he found a way, "Injury; this kind of injury."

The door to Beckett's office shut behind her harder than she had intended, but she was finding it difficult to breathe and endure the erratic cadence of her heartbeat. Every word she had heard in the last few minutes was looping through her brain challenging everything she had said and done since Vikram had called her asking for help. From that first lie she had reflexively told Rick about who had been on the phone to the last one…that she'd just needed time to figure things out. Everything had been set in motion that day. She had done this.

The door, much to her surprise, remained closed for the next couple of hours and miraculously her phone never rang once. She didn't wonder how or why, she was just grateful. The knowledge that soon, too soon, someone would walk into this space and her life would take yet another unexpected turn was about all she could manage to grapple with at the moment.

As she casually scanned the bullpen, Beckett saw the boys rise from their desks and head for her door. Turning quickly away to face the outside windows, she told herself she was as ready as she would ever be.

Esposito's words jettisoned from him before he was barely across the threshold, "Beckett, we know."

A single tear escaped down her cheek, and she swiped it away before turning to face them, "You know what?"

Ryan was fighting conflicting emotions and it showed in his voice, "We know what you've been doing."

"We just don't know why you have been hiding it," Javi added in a less confrontational tone.

Kate crossed her arms defensively over her chest, "What is it that you think you know?"

Irritation passed over Kevin's face at the deflection, but he continued, "We know you've been looking for him."

Surprise registered in her eyes as Espo continued the explanation, "The Hamptons. We know you've been there. The first time was ten days ago. The day Castle took off."

She knew any denial she tried to make would be lost on them, "Okay, so I went to see if he was there. He wasn't."

Ryan took advantage of the admission; "You've been back four or five times since then."

Beckett drew a blank. She had nothing to say that would be of any use getting her out of this conversation.

"You've even stayed the night at the beach house a few times. The caretaker saw you," Javi knew they had her cornered. She wasn't the only expert interrogator in the room.

Kate's shoulders suddenly sagged, and she took in a ragged tired breath of air as she gave up the facade, "I had to try and find him."

"What's really going on here?" Ryan was fighting tremors of emotion that were rippling beneath his skin.

After what seemed like several long minutes, but was only a few seconds, she broke, "I was trying to keep him safe."

"Keep him safe from what?" There was a tinge of incredulity in Kevin's voice.

Beckett seemed to be fighting an internal mechanism stronger than herself, "From me."

"You're not making any sense, Kate," Espo had never seen her quite like this before.

It was then that the dam that had been holding all of her demons, fears and compulsions away from the light of day failed, and they all came washing out at once in a mass of chaos, self-recrimination and desperation, "I thought that if I pushed him away; kept him at a distance, that I could do this and he would be safe."

Ryan's face contorted with frustration, "What the hell are you talking about?"

Realization crossed his partner's, "Wait a minute. I know what this is all about. How could I have not seen it before?"

Kevin looked to Javi for answers since he obviously wasn't going to get them from Beckett, "Seen what?"

"Her new flunky – Vikram," he sounded very sure of the veracity of what he was thinking.

"He's a nobody. She gave him a job when his team got wiped out. So what?" Ryan's expression morphed into one reflective of awakening clarity. He turned to face her straight on, "You didn't bring him here because he needed a job; you brought him here to help you do one."

Kate tried to speak, but her brain and voice couldn't seem to work out the logistics.

Espo stepped in with his own theory, "You never did buy the Assistant AG as the head of the LockSat snake and you and Vikram have been working ever since to find out who was really behind the assassination of your old FED team."

It made perfect sense, his theory, what didn't was why she had systematically shut Castle out and kept them in the dark, "I just don't get why you thought you had to do this alone. Everything we have been through. Everything we have done over the years. We have secrets that have bound us together as more than that. We are more than just colleagues and friends. We are family."

Beckett's eyes searched for a receptive place to land as she finally found the words to explain, "The two months that he was missing. They were almost more than I could handle. I kept looking for him even when everyone else gave up because I was afraid of what would happen to me if I stopped."

"He came back, Beckett," Ryan's tone had lost all signs of his earlier anger and resentment.

She pounced on his argument, "He came back, but I didn't find him, and we still don't know where he was, what he did or what happened to him for more than half the time he was missing."

Kevin suddenly understood, "You've been afraid he would disappear again."

She didn't outwardly acknowledge the truth in his words, but it was there buried deep beneath layers of emotional fencing, "When Vikram called and asked for my help I knew it was something I had to do. My old FED team was dead and they deserve justice. I just didn't know that getting it for them was going to be this difficult and the price so incredibly high."

As difficult as her explanation was to accept on the face of it, they could see how it would make sense in her mind given her history of loss, "That's why you pushed Castle away, but why not let us help?" Kevin felt they had a right to ask.

Kate had finally stopped fighting herself and the truth, "You said it yourself. We are family. If things went south, I wanted to be LockSat's only target. This isn't your fight."

Espo looked to Kevin for the right words and he didn't disappoint, "If you truly believe that – in us as family – then it is our fight. Family sticks together – always."

Beckett's head whipped around at his use of the emotionally poignant endearment just as Lanie entered her office and shut the door behind her. The faces already in the room were strained from protracted emotion, and the expression on hers only served to tighten the noose on the tension.

All eyes fell to the file she held loosely in her hand as though she didn't want to be touching it at all. No one wanted to be the one to ask, so they waited in silence for several very tense seconds, "I'm so sorry, Kate."

Through tears that welled up in his own eyes, Ryan saw her slump into Lanie's embrace, but what would stay with him indefinitely was the visceral whispered word _no_ that came from a place so deep within her that there was no room left to doubt that her intent, however misguided, had been to protect Castle and herself from this very moment.

The true tragedy in all of this would eventually dawn on her as it already had on him. She had distanced herself from her husband to ensure his safety and to keep him near, but in reality had only made him more vulnerable to the very powers she was trying to shield him from. What he must have seen as abandonment and rejection drove him back to the life he lived in those missing weeks she was so afraid were coming back one day to claim him.

If she had only understood that wherever he had been during that lost time, whatever he had been doing, he had given it all up to come back to her. It broke his heart. They had fought so hard to be together; overcome so much for it to end like this. She was broken; always had been, but his love had made her whole. Without it, he didn't know what would become of her, of any of them really. They were family, and they had just lost their common ground and center. After the shock wore off, grief would be coming for each of them in its own insidious way. What would be left of them – of the ties that bind – only time would tell.


	10. Chapter 10 - No More Lies

Whisky-Tango-Foxtrot

Chapter 10 – No More Lies

Castle would never allow himself the luxury of second-guessing anything that had happened over the last two weeks. He already understood that the decisions made and the subsequent actions he had taken hadn't really involved choice at all, but had been precipitated by necessity. He had no regrets or if he did, he had no capacity at present to deal with them. The place in his mind where he would archive the things he'd done and witnessed resided in the deepest recesses of his memory where they belonged. Only this time, he would be the one to put them there. Decide what needed to be lodged as far away from his conscious mind as possible. No drugs, no agency therapist bending or dampening the truth; just him dealing with the events in his life like the rest of humanity. He searched for any sign of comfort that could be found in that understanding, but found very little to dull his reeling senses.

"Look who's awake?" Dr. Amman entered the room very obviously trying not to disturb or agitate him.

"Not so sure it's a good thing." He hadn't seen his face yet, but could feel that it had taken quite a thrashing.

"I've got something for that if you need it," she settled into place directly in front of where he sat on the side of the hospital bed rattling a couple of pills in a Dixie type cup.

He held out his hand and she emptied the contents of the white paper cup into it, "Am I still going to be me when these wear off?" He was only half kidding.

She smiled somewhat amused by the question, but cognizant of what was behind it, "Will you still be a mystery novel writing spy when the high goes away? Yes, Rick, you will be." She looked away from him for a moment to grab the ice water on the instrument tray. "I can give you something stronger intravenously."

Castle popped the pills and slowly began chewing them up as he watched her completely ignoring the offer, "How is he?"

Taking a drink of the water he obviously didn't need gave her a second to answer, "He looks a lot like you do in the face."

He laughed because it was funny, "Ruggedly handsome?"

"Somewhere under all of those bruises, contusions and swelling you both are." Marlowe settled into examining him allowing some of the tension to pass. Knowing Rick as well as she did, there was no masking the anomalous nuances in him though he seemed to be trying. They were subtle, but undeniable, first in the line of his jaw and most markedly the distance in his eyes. Someone she did not fully recognize was looking back at her and she found it unsettling, "Let me see those burns."

He shifted his legs around allowing her access to his back, and he couldn't hide the shiver of pain that jolted through him when she pulled back the tape and gauze, "A thorough debridement and a skin graft or two and your back should be good as new. I am a little concerned about your lungs though. Your oxygenation is lower than I would like. I'm afraid that bullet might have nicked something or the smoke inhalation is worse than it has presented so far."

"You trying to sweet talk me, doc?" Castle could feel the warm buzz of the pain meds beginning to dull the pulse of angry nerve endings throughout his whole body.

She fully laughed out loud at that. This new Rick Castle still had the swagger and charm of the old and she was oddly happy to see it, "For having spent most of your lives apart, you two really are remarkably similar."

The door to the room suddenly blew open without reserve, "Where's my boy?"

Castle lurched from his seated position just in time to catch his father before he hit the ground, "Hey, there, pop. I think you got the good stuff and I got the baby aspirin."

Seconds behind, Rita lunged through the door, "I told you not to get out of that bed!"

Castle let her help him put the very recently rescued and severely battered man on the bed. "Easy, Dad, you really should not be up."

The man known to everyone in the room as Jackson Hunt had a glazed expression that revealed the presence of a heavy narcotic cocktail in his bloodstream and he was fighting it every step of the way, "I asked them to bring me to you, but they started giving me the runaround, so I just came on my own."

Rick sat on the bed next to his father not only to ensure he stayed put, but because he was feeling light headed himself, "Well, you're here now, and you can see for yourself that I'm fine."

The older man wobbled unsteadily as he tried to focus on his son's face, "If that's fine then I must be damn near perfect. You look like hell, son."

Henry Jenkins entered the room just as everyone broke into a healthy laugh, "Did I miss the invitation to the party?"

"You missed my husband breaking out of I.C.U. against orders," Rita let the smile from the previous moment play a moment longer on her face.

"Wow, you two look…uhhhh…wow." Henry had heard the men had been badly injured while in the field and were a bit worse for wear, but even he was taken aback by the severity of just what was visible on first sight.

"Well, why don't you leave and take all these people with you, so the two invalids can have a minute to talk?" The question came across more as the order it was.

For once Rita didn't argue, or manipulate, or push until she got her way. She simply kissed first Rick and then her husband gently on the forehead before motioning everyone else out of the room.

When the door shut leaving them alone together for the first time since the rescue mission commenced, each one exhaled slowly and painfully leaving the moment open for the other to begin.

"I knew you would come for me. That's what made this whole thing so terrible, but it's also what kept me hanging on." His voice was low, quiet and intense.

Castle leaned into his father's shoulder offering and receiving support, "When Henry came to me and told me you had been taken and that I was the only one who could help, there was no question."

He couldn't look at Rick, "I never wanted you to have to go back there again. Certainly not because of me."

"Who else would it be for? We're family. You came out of the shadows for me when Alexis was kidnapped." He stopped there because the rest was self-explanatory.

"And you went back into them for me…I'm so sorry, Rick." The seasoned intelligence asset had spent his life minimizing emotional connections and using distance to keep himself and those he loved safe. It was a hard pill to swallow that the very opposite is what had saved him.

Several long seconds passed before Castle gained the clarity necessary to make himself understood, "I'm not." He paused again, but only to take a deeper breath, "I'm not sorry that you and I are sitting here together; shot, burned and beat all to hell. And you know why?" He stood up too fast and quickly doubled over in pain before righting himself to his full height.

Hunt was more heavily drugged than his son, but he was dialed into the conversation, "No, I can't say I do."

Rick had broken into a sweat and his face was flushed, "Because it's the truth. It's real. I see you and you see me – no more smoke and mirrors - neither of us has to pretend anymore about who we really are."

Concern washed over Jackson's face, "Twenty years ago, you had very real, very compelling reasons for choosing to forget you ever lived this life."

His face seemed to glow as he thought of her; "I did and have never regretted it for a single instant. My little girl needed a father then, but she's all grown up now."

Hunt knew this was going to hurt, "What about Kate? You chose to forget this last time for her."

A pain deeper than any physical one he had endured so far clawed at him, "I wanted to still be the man she fell in love with. I thought putting the genie back in the bottle again was the only way to make sure I was that guy."

Jackson sensed that it was important that Castle put what had happened into words, but he couldn't bring himself to ask.

Rick's eyes were burning behind swollen lids and he was grateful the tears couldn't come, "But it didn't matter in the end. Her insecurities. The past. Her demons. She chose them over me the first chance she got. No contest."

"You really think it's that simple?"

"It was for her when she left me," Castle sat heavily back down beside his dad.

Hunt slowly and carefully raised his arm and draped it across his son's shoulders, as fathers are prone to do, "Women can be more dangerous to a man than any adversary out there. But, you need to remember, that love and time can heal a lot of what ails you."

Rick nodded acknowledging that he had heard, but did not necessarily agree, "I finally understand what my problem has been with Beckett. She likes who she is and sees absolutely nothing wrong with the way she goes about things. I've spent too many years waiting for something that is never going to happen."

"And what is that?"

Castle started to explain, but stopped short when he heard two very familiar voices getting louder and more demanding as they drew nearer to the room. He got up so quickly from the bed that his father almost toppled over.

Jerking open the door, the look of joy on his face brought tears to the older man's eyes when Rick cried out, "Alexis! Mother!"

Rita slid quietly past the reunion taking place in the hallway and took up residence in the spot so abruptly abandoned by her son-in-law, "You can be mad at me for as long as you need to be."

"I'm not mad. You did what you had to do. He was the only one who knew which rocks to turn over to find me."

"I'm convinced that was the plan all along. After you surfaced and helped get Alexis back in Paris, someone must have begun to suspect that Castle had been in the agency at some point back in the day. They decided to try and draw him out using a case so old only he would be able to help. You were the bait. Trouble is – now they know they were right."

"You still think LockSat was behind this?" Hunt was unnerved by her theory and the sense it made.

Rita looked into her husband's face hoping to convince him she was right, "Whoever is at the head of this thing doesn't just blame Beckett for taking away their future puppet president when Bracken went down. They know Castle played a huge part in her uncovering the truth, and they now know he's way more than just a mystery writer and NYPD consultant."

Acceptance began seeping in through the denial he had been holding on to, "But Rick knows everything now too. He'll be ready if they come."

"He sticking with his decision to let his past be a part of his present?" Rita wasn't surprised, but did have some concerns. Intelligence asset Rick and affable New York playboy mystery writer Rick had never spent any real time together – until now.

"Seems so. Says he's tired of the lies." Jackson paused, "I can't say I blame him."

"Tired or not, he's got a few more of those to contend with when he tries to slip back into the skin of his life. It might not fit so well anymore." The look on her face did little to prepare him for whatever she intended to say next.

"You're referring to Beckett I presume," Jackson lowered his voice perceptibly.

"She's certainly got more than her fair share of secrets and now he has to decide which of his own to reveal." The off-handed way she laid the issue out there left her opinion about the whole convoluted situation ill-defined.

"Are secrets necessarily lies?" Hunt wasn't sure he had an answer to his own query.

"You know, she never even told him we met more or less anything I said." He could tell that his wife had placed that omission firmly in the lie category.

Hunt's eyebrow rose involuntarily, "You told her who you were?"

"Had to give her something so she would trust me," the justification came quickly, simply with no hidden guile behind it.

Rita rested her head on his shoulder and he allowed his to follow suit, "You played that girl, honey, and she hurt him because of it."

Rita cocked her head slightly, seriously considering the allegation, "I just showed her the ledge. The choice to jump was completely hers."

"Yes, but you had a pretty good idea she would do just that with what you put in her head," Hunt knew his wife better than anyone and just how far she would have been willing to go considering the stakes.

She sighed heavily and he took that as acquiescence, "I knew Rick would never agree to come back for the memory retrieval needed to get you back if Kate was still in the picture."

He shook his head wistfully marveling at the scene still unfolding in front of him. His son was like him in many ways, but there was one thing that was Castle's alone – and always had been - an unwavering commitment to those he loved, "I think you were wrong about that."

The two life-long spies watched the family as they continued to embrace, reconnect and revel in just being together, "You know, I think I was too."


	11. Chapter 11- Cold Coffee

A/N: I am going to finish WTF for the loyal readers who have followed me during my Castle FanFic time. I will warn you that these chapters will probably be shorter than some in the past. I will write and post as quickly as I can. For those of you still reading, thank you for teaching me so much about being a writer. I am better because you were a part of the process. KF

Chapter 11 – Cold Coffee

The 12th Precinct rattled with tension tangled irrevocably with unbridled anger and grief. Richard Castle's death had unleashed an array of shockwaves throughout every facet of the NYPD. Officers who knew him personally were taking it so, and those who did not, suffered as though one of their own had been struck down because, to them, that was who he was.

The darkened, empty office of Captain Katherine Beckett Castle drew the professional family together where a makeshift memorial began to take shape on and around what everyone knew to be Castle's chair. There were hand-written notes on post-its, business cards, flowers, copies of his Nikki Heat books, and even a small stuffed big-foot and zombie that elicited brief smiles of recollection from those who really knew him. But what took everyone's breath away and broke hearts just a little bit more was the unclaimed coffee that waited hot and steaming for someone who would never come for it. Every so often, a fresh cup would be brought to replace the cold one. No one questioned the sentiment, but looked for a chance to become a part of the ritual because coffee was comfort, coffee was love – coffee was him.

The elevator bell continued to announce new arrivals throughout the day. Some visitors were there on actual police business, but most of the time, the passenger's loaded three rows deep in the shallow box shared a singular and somber purpose. The captain's office having been their initial destination, Castle's chair was where each would end up wavering precariously on the ledge of emotion as they took in the impromptu sight before leaving behind of piece of themselves in memoriam.

A small band of 12th Precinct brothers and sisters seemed to hover near Ryan and Espo. No one knew what to say because there was nothing anyone could construct to make each excruciating moment any easier to absorb and endure.

Ryan was the first to speak, but his voice was tenuous and wavering, "Javi, what do we do now?"

His partner, usually quick with a saw-toothed retort just stared back at him with dark eyes reddened and swollen with cornered tears.

"I need some help with this one. I really do." Ryan's desolation pulled hard at Espo's stoic resolve.

"We find who did this," his voice was inflexible and barely audible.

Ryan nodded, "Yes, we find them, and we make sure they never get the chance to do this to someone else."

Javi's head shook left to right imperceptible to everyone else, "We take care of it."

"That's not how we do things," Ryan's mind was trying to find the rails he had suddenly been thrown from by those unexpected words.

"Okay, then," Espo looked wild-eyed, untamed, "It's how I do things."

Kevin's deeply ingrained morality caused him to balk and semi-choke on his partner's threat as he forced the man to look at him, "Castle wouldn't want this."

The military sniper that still lived within spoke his truth, "Castle doesn't want anything anymore."

Kevin was speechless. The elevator arrived again, and the room seemed to get smaller every time its doors opened and more people spewed into the already sardined space.

"What if it were me downstairs on that slab? What then?" The question was laid out there in front of the Irish Catholic schoolboy as if it were an oath to be taken on the bible itself.

Ryan's answer was notably quick and emphatic, "The same thing you would do if it were me." Kevin's skin had begun to flush with the heat generated by this new mutual purpose, and he could see the pulse in Espo's throat banging out its own heightened rhythm.

Javi's expression didn't waver while Kevin's hardened to match his partner's in resolve and intensity. Whoever had killed Castle – their friend, partner, and brother – his time as the hunter was over and whether he knew it or not, his days as prey were numbered.

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The warmth emanating from the mug was the only reason Kate Beckett could seize upon to explain why her hands were not trembling along with the rest of her body. Maybe it was how tightly she gripped the ceramic cup or possibly it was simply the hardness of it in her hands that allowed the absorption of the nervous energy that pulsed through her. Or maybe it was just the combination of sensations allowed her to focus momentarily on something other than the consummate physical paroxysms that were ripping her apart from the inside out as her new reality took up residence.

It was merely seconds before another question – the only one that really mattered – returned to plague her. Why had she done it? Chosen the chase over her marriage. She had long ago accepted that the years they spent dancing around one another had been lost to little more than a very base fear; having something you desperately desired and then losing it. Back then; losing him to a personal flaw or failure on her part had seemed the worst possible thing that could happen. She had no idea that there was something far more devastating. Death. He was gone. This too was her failure. She had never doubted her ability to keep him safe when they were working together. There had been an inexplicable symbiosis between them. Somehow he knew to zig when she zagged, and she knew to duck when he was there for cover. Her mistake, her miscalculation, had not been in dealing with the outside threats, but the one that came from within, from Castle himself. Kate had been so certain, so sure she knew him; his every action and reaction, but she had been wrong, and that mistake had demanded payment in the most extreme form imaginable.

Rita's words haunted her. She had tried to warn Beckett off LokSat. Even attempted to use her own dysfunctional marriage to Castle's father as an example of what not to do if you wanted to be happy and normal; a simple illustration of the almost inevitable denouement that awaited them if things didn't change drastically and imminently.

Always – she had meant it every time she said it. Even when she left him, she thought that somehow he would know that there was a really good reason for her actions. They had survived so many secrets. How was she to know that this one would be the last – their undoing?

Richard Castle, partner, best friend, her husband, was dead. She had thought about the possibility multiple times – lost sleep over it – but never planned for it. She knew there were steps – things to be done, but she couldn't do them. Reality's serrated edges grated against her exposed psyche allowing her soul to seep through the wounds. The walls he had torn down – they weren't just a pile of rubble, but had been reduced to fine grit that swirled around inside her clogging every corner of her being. It was as though she were standing naked facing head on into a torrential ferocious dust storm. The stinging pain keeping her consciousness aware and alert and in a chronic state of suffering.

Blame and guilt; she was enveloped in it. Castle had only gone with Henry Jenkins because of a belief that she had fostered in him; that their relationship was over. He had run out of faith – or patience – or both. The divorce papers proved that he had believed there was nothing left to lose except himself, and that is exactly what he'd done.

She finally got it. Understood them. Understood him. But it was too late. Their clock had run down to zero, and there was no story to be spun that could rewrite their ending because the storyteller was gone and with him the crazy imaginative genius to get them out of harms way one last time. It was with that realization that the mug slipped from her grasp and shattered into jagged shards at her feet. Frozen and staring into the mess she had made, Kate Beckett stopped fighting against the accusing, grasping tendrils of her grief.

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"You ready, Dad?" Alexis had stood quietly in the doorway for more than a minute waiting for her father to notice her.

Castle turned from the window of his hotel suite to face his daughter; his countenance lightening instantaneously at the sight of her. She was holding two coffees.

A quick flicker of something she didn't recognize invaded his visage, but was gone before he had crossed the room to greet her, "Is it time to go already?"

Handing him his cup then slipping her free hand under his arm she continued, "Your return from the dead is imminent."

His demeanor took on a kind of fog as he sipped absently of the warm morning brew, "As ready as I will ever be, I guess."

"This isn't going to be an easy day for you," she knew it was something that went without saying, but Alexis hoped it might get him talking. The whirlwind previous 24 hours had been filled with questions, explanations, and stories about the past and how they tied to the present. The young woman found out who her father really was before she came along and how he had changed his life's trajectory by 180 degrees to be her dad. Agency psychologists briefed her formally in an attempt to prepare for the possibility that he might not be exactly the father she remembered. Having chosen to allow all of his memories to remain intact, there was no doubt the impact would be profound and pervasive, but she didn't care. Her father was here. He was alive, and they were going home.

He continued smiling at her, but there was something behind his eyes. There was a remoteness she had not seen before; a part of the recently uncovered Rick Rogers, "Have you decided yet?"

He didn't speak immediately – another notable difference – but seemed to be weighing his words; "I should see Kate before the press conference. She doesn't deserve to find out like that."

Alexis wondered if she should be surprised that he knew exactly what was on her mind, but she wasn't. This dad was not just intuitive, but anticipatory and seemingly several steps ahead of the game. "I'm not sure I agree."

He reached up and brushed a stray band of hair back from his daughter's face, "That's anger talking, sweetheart."

Alexis shrugged admitting non-verbally that he was probably right, "How's that going to go?"

Three knuckled raps on the door broke the moment apart like the proverbial bell that had saved so many before him.

He drained the last of the coffee noting that it was completely cold, but forced it down anyway before dropping the disposable cup in the trashcan on the way to answer the door, "Hey, you think my resurrection might be enough to finally get me an interview with Oprah?"

Amused and gratified to see the man-child still lived inside this new version of her dad, Alexis and Castled laughed out loud and hoped for the best as they stepped into a reformatted future rife with unknowns, but promising a shared journey without any secrets or lies. That alone was something to embrace and they intended to do just that.


	12. Chapter 12 - Resurrection

Chapter 12 – Resurrection

What was waiting on the other side of the door would change everything. He had intended to be the one to tell Beckett. Be physically and mentally present with answers to the vast array of questions that his return from the dead would undoubtedly elicit. He had been prepared to absorb and help manage emotions from her that would most assuredly run the gamut from relief to anger and everywhere in between. He felt he owed her that. For everything they had been through. But that was not to be.

Alexis was already reaching for the door when Castle gently pushed her to the side while brushing a single finger over his own lips indicating that his spidey sense was tingling and there was a tangible need for her silence. Nodding while backing away further from the entry, she heard voices on the other side whispered and urgent. Derek Storm. For the second time in only a few short weeks, she heard a name mentioned that sent her brain reeling as it tried to make sense of its relevance. She glanced at her father, into a face that was a mosaic of the man who had raised her and a man she knew only from books.

Watching him pull a weapon she didn't even know he possessed from the small of his back in a smoothly fluid expert motion further gummed up her ability to think clearly in a moment that was quickly spiraling wildly out of the norm and into the surreal. Her father placed himself squarely between her and whatever was behind door number one. His profile revealed a jawline honed to a razor's edge with what she could only perceive as a concentrated focus she didn't know her easily distracted writer dad even had.

"Behind the couch! Now!" he whisper ordered in a voice she did not recognize, but quickly obeyed.

Rick Castle or Rogers or Storm or whoever he was now, quickly slid sideways and forward until he was flush with the side of the door he knew was about to open. The internal mechanism of the lock hummed as it rolled back and the L-shaped door handle began to move downward toward the floor. Castle hurled one more glance and command toward his daughter's hiding place, "Stay down." He paused briefly and something in the wheelhouse of heartbreak crossed his chiseled features, "Close your eyes, Alexis."

The last part came across more as an appeal rather than an order, and she instinctively wanted to do it. Told herself that she should simply because her father had asked it of her. But something infinitely stronger than her practiced habit of rule following wouldn't let her. She had to watch. There was no way she couldn't. The danger they were in terrified her. What was waiting on the other side of that door frightened her as well, but there was more to it than that. In the fragments of the second that the hotel room door burst open, she knew what it was. There was a part of her that was afraid of him too.

The three men were unprepared for the ferocity of the counter-attack that was waiting for them barely a single step into the room. A solid elbow to the throat of the entry guy doubled him over reflexively allowing Castle to land a knee firmly across the nose of the intruder while using his body as a barrier between himself and the two that were drafting after him. The first shot took the closer of the remaining invaders center mass dropping him like a concrete block. The man's gun lurched from his hand and took a jarring bounce into the center of the room and skimmed across the carpet to rest several feet from where Alexis remained in hiding but unable to look away.

The rest of the altercation felt interminable though she knew it had been over in less than a minute. The second shot's trajectory took out the ceiling fixture and most certainly pierced the floor of the room above them. The fight that ensued between her father and the last man was beautifully one sided. She knew that she was witnessing the expert employment of at least one martial art or even a combination of several. In less than sixty seconds, all three bad guys were down, disarmed and not getting up any time soon. One, she was pretty sure, would not be getting up at all.

After clearing the weapons and the immediate hallway, Rick turned suddenly to face his visibly shaken daughter. He watched her breath catch in her throat suffocating an anxiety initiated yelp as he came toward her. The moment her eyes met his and he pulled her to her feet and yanked her into his embrace, she knew the father who had raised her was still inside of him. Her dad would always be her dad, and that whatever he remembered about who he used to be, those memories did not have the power to change their shared history and who they were to one another. They were a part of who he was at his core and in that moment, she knew their relationship would remain unchanged by his past.

"Alexis, are you hurt?" She buried her face in his chest as warm tears of uncontrollable relief flooded through her.

"I'm okay. Are you?" She pulled away so that they could effectively inspect one another.

Both spontaneously began to laughed the awkward way people do when an almost certain tragedy that had been bearing down on them was somehow miraculously avoided.

"NYPD! Drop the gun and get down on your knees! Now!"

Alexis peered uneasily past her father's shoulder to the mass of uniformed men crowding the doorway. Castle smiled at her comfortingly, "It's okay, sweetheart." He engaged the safety without anyone even noticing before he tossed the gun to the side and began speaking very calmly yet confidently. "Don't shoot. I'm going to turn around slowly and then reach into my jacket pocket for my credentials."

"Dad!" Her fear had returned two-fold.

His smile didn't waver, and she undeniably saw the fun dad she had played laser tag with in their apartment all those years, but she saw the rest of him too; the recently reawakened agent. The trained asset. The spy. In her mind's eye, she saw the pages of his books come to life. Her father was Derek Storm and Derek Storm was her father. The characters and stories he had spent so many years writing about had been based on reality; his reality - one he had chosen to leave buried in his psyche in such a way that they were only accessible, manageable through writing about them. It all made a crazy kind of sense that only made her love him more. He had done it for her. She couldn't pinpoint exactly how she knew, but there was not a trace of doubt in her mind that it was true.

"Easy does it!" An officer firmly commanded still billeted by the doorway and his backup.

Winking at Alexis he whispered as he turned with a classic Rick Castle smile and both hands raised above his shoulders to face his untimely resurrection, "This is probably gonna sting a little."

The tenseness of the standoff quickly dissolved into shocked disbelief and then excited celebration as the uniforms at the door, mostly from the 12th precinct, realized who they had locked in their cross-hairs.

No one even asked to see the badge he had offered to show them seconds before, and he let it go himself being a firm believer that in this particular moment, less was indeed more.

In the middle of all of the mayhem, somehow the two interlopers who were still breathing were removed from the room, weapons secured, and crime scene tape was erected all within an electrified air of elation laced heavily with relief and incredulity.

As the minutes continued to tick off, it became more likely that an up close and personal reunion with his past was imminent and squarely out of his control since the Castles found that they were somewhat helpless to extricate themselves from the room and the situation without causing a major scene. The news spread quickly by word of mouth and radio to dispatch that Richard Castle had been found alive and well in an upscale hotel room in New York City with his daughter, a gun, a dead body, and two other severely injured men. He knew that it was only a matter of scant minutes more before his rise from the ashes of the Hampton's shootout and house fire would be the top news story all over town.

"So it's true. You're alive." Kevin Ryan looked as though someone had just proved the existence of the tooth fairy beyond all reasonable doubt.

Slipping easily into the Castle skin the boys knew so well, he joked, "I guess the reports of my death were greatly exaggerated."

"I should punch you right in the face," Javi sounded angry, but his eyes couldn't disguise the relief that was threatening to overwhelm him.

"What? You don't like Mark Twain?" he quipped without missing a beat.

Kevin hugged him hard, "We were responding to the shots fired call when we heard. I couldn't believe it. I figured it had to be a mistake."

"Yeah, had to be because the Castle we knew would never have put us all through the hell of thinking he had been murdered and incinerated in a fire." The accusation was harsh, but understandable and theoretically correct, and Rick couldn't help but try and defend himself against it.

"That was never part of the plan. Things went sideways in the Hampton's, and we had to improvise," the justification though riddled with a hollow ring, was the absolute truth.

Kevin's initial elation had begun to subside as exactly what Castle's presence meant to everyone's current reality, "We? Who are you talking about? What exactly is happening here?"

"If it's not you in the morgue, then who the hell is it?" Javi's suspicions were going to demand answers. "Did you kill that man?"

Before Rick could even begin to formulate a response to their battery of questions, Henry Jenkins and Rita came through the door badges waving parting the officers in the room like the Red Sea, "Rick, Alexis, are you two alright?"

"Hey, that's Jenkins!" Ryan observed quickly and with no small level of indignation.

Espo followed up his partner's observation with one of his own, "And that is the woman who was talking to little Castle at the P.I. office." Each of them was right, but neither had enough pieces to put the puzzle together, but he was the first in the room to confront the new comers, "Who the hell are you people?"

Rita ignored Javi and crossed to Castle and Alexis hugging them with relief. Henry addressed the elephant in the room, "Special Agent Henry Jenkins with the DSS. I need everyone to step out of the room. We will be taking over this scene."

"Now, wait a minute," Kevin was incensed as were many of his blue brethren.

Castle stepped in quickly to try and quell the tempers that were rising in the room, "It's okay. He's with the good guys."

"What about her?" Espo got the first inkling of an idea that this particular agency juice was way above his pay grade. Jenkins had C.I.A. spook oozing from every pore leading him to believe that this current I.D. was as phony as the one he had used when their investigation first crossed paths with him. However, he was in no position to question it directly on the heels of Castle's solid endorsement of the man.

Ryan was processing all the new information as rapidly as possible, "What business does the Diplomatic Security Service have taking point on an NYPD case?"

Rita took her turn, relishing the big reveal, "When one of our own is attacked along with his daughter in your fair city."

Ryan tried to uncross the wires of conflicting information in his head. He looked from Castle to Alexis and then back again, "You're DSS."

The girl blurted in her own defense, "Not me!"

Espo was finally catching on to where this information dump was leading, "Who is DSS?"

"He is." Kevin was certain he was right. The familiar blue eyes he had managed to lock with told him so.

The throng in the room had thinned to just the key players in the conversation, "Be straight with us. Is he right? Are you a FED now? Was all this some big secret DSS operation?"

The three friends stared at one another, the years of having one another's back weighing heavily among them.

"You don't have to do this, Rick. You don't owe them an explanation." Henry was trying to aid Castle, but his intervention only heightened the already painful tension.

"You agree with the suit, Castle? After everything we've been through…all the years…the cases...the secrets. We don't deserve the truth?" Javi wasn't sure what the answer was going to be and that troubled him.

There was an exchange of furtive glances among the agents in the room as he reached into his jacket and retrieved the answer to the question.

Kevin read the credentials aloud, "Special Agent Richard Castle. Department of State - Diplomatic Security Service."

"We have to go, Rick. You're compromised." Henry reached down, retrieved Castle's gun and handed it to him, which he promptly secured on his person in a manner that registered with Javi due to its practiced ease.

Espo stepped up to Castle and stopped him from moving forward with a hand to his chest, "You can't just go."

"I'm sorry, Javi, I don't have a choice." The voice belonged to the Castle he thought he knew, but the eyes looking into his did not and it unnerved him slightly.

He turned to Alexis dismissing Espo's objection all together, "I had hoped that this was finally done. I really thought it was. Sweetheart, I have to go and put an end to this, so we'll all be safe and I can come home for good."

Tears swelled behind lids she had let close to stop them, "Will you? Will you come back?"

He wrapped the young woman in his arms one last time and tried to reassure her knowing all too well how fragile this moment was, "Of course, I'll come back." He tipped her chin up toward his face, "Look at me please." She did. "Everything I have ever done since the day you were born was what I thought was best for you. Do you believe me?"

She nodded, but couldn't speak. "Then you know that what I'm doing now is for the same reason. I am not my father. I would never abandon you. Not for anything."

Rita visibly flinched at her son-in-law's words regarding Hunt, but said nothing.

The girl clung tightly to her father like she had when she was little, and he had comforted her following a bad dream, "I get it. I understand why you have to do this. I really do."

The boys could tell that she knew a lot more about the situation than they did, but that would have to wait. "What about Beckett?" Kevin was the one to broach the question that had been hanging awkwardly in the heated air of the room waiting to be asked. "Who is going to explain all of this to her?"

Rita stepped into the conversation for only the second time, "For god's sake, I'll do it. I will go with you now and tell her what I can and answer any questions that won't jeopardize the op."

Henry backed her play, "It's the best and only offer you are going to get. I would suggest taking it."

Castle kissed Alexis on the forehead and stepped around the boys, stoic and with a distance in his tone and expression that intimated that he was already gone, "I'm sorry guys." He hesitated in the doorway, "Tell her that for me."


	13. Chapter 13 - Truth

**Beware all ye who enter here.** This story is not a "feel good Beckett gets pregnant tale". So if that is what you are looking for, please turn back now. The story started out as a twist on the ridiculous wedding ruining kidnapping, voluntary memory loss storyline and will continue as such. **Final note** – given the way the last few seasons went and the crap ending faithful viewers were given, nothing is OOC because it was made clear that story cannon and character growth meant nothing over the course of the show. Read if you want to – don't read if you think this story might not be for you. There are so many GREAT writers with amazing stories out there. Leave a review if you have something interesting/insightful/constructive to say – Otherwise – please go away and keep the negative crazy to yourself.

 **Chapter 13 –Truth**

The text had come in to Kate's cell as she was trying to process what was being reported all around her along with the skeletal information Rita had shown up unannounced to impart about what Castle had done twenty years ago to keep his daughter and mother safe. It was from a blocked and most likely encrypted number and contained only an address. It was one she wasn't familiar with, but there was no hesitation. She was out of the station and to her car almost unnoticed; the chaos caused by recent events providing all the cover she needed.

Still stunned and reeling, she keyed the address into the GPS and allowed herself to be taken there by mental autopilot. So many questions waffled through her adrenaline-saturated subconscious, but they were disconnected and tangled with emotions that she didn't quite have a handle on yet. Euphoric with relief that Castle was not in a drawer in Lanie's morgue, Beckett found herself slammed hard by the reality that the man she thought she knew better than anyone was someone she apparently didn't know at all.

Did it even really matter who she thought he was before today? It was impossible to know in a world suddenly telescoped in on itself what would become of either of them. Any attempt at visualizing what the next day might look like could go nowhere. Without a reliable past to act as prelude, their possible futures had no starting point or agreed upon direction. What exactly would one expect to happen when the hidden lives of two very complex people were exposed to the elements and one another for the very first time?

There could be no argument that the context of their relationship had not been one founded on any pedestrian norm. It was an accord that had been erected upon shifting sands that had somehow managed to hold together far longer than it should have.

They had each had their reasons for each and every lie of omission that battered their commitment and love for one another. Secrets, half-truths and deleted details instituted under a guise of self-less protection. What did it really mean and what did it say about them as individuals and as a couple that they had never managed to find the path that would allow them to come at one another straight on and test their resolve to be together under the harsh judgment of complete honesty and raw truth? Kate believed that some things were meant to be, while others were brought about through chance and serendipity, yet she knew too that there were those who never should have been. That last one – it rattled her. It seemed to be waiting for her as if expecting an answer; an answer she didn't have.

The address was a nondescript recently renovated loft space in an area of town that was quickly becoming gentrified. The bottom floor housed a Starbuck's and several boutique stores that brought consistent, but manageable foot traffic into the area; a perfect place for a safe house. After parking the car on the street nearby, Kate sat quietly measuring each breath as she tried to steady her thoughts for what was to come. Realizing that she was as ready as she would ever be, she left her vehicle and crossed the street to the door that would lead directly upstairs bypassing the retail stores on the bottom level.

Her phone buzzed again. The same blocked number and another cryptic anemic message popped up – a six-digit code. She keyed it into the entry pad embedded in the wall by the door. The door lock disengaged and at the same time, all traces of the two messages mysteriously disappeared from her phone.

Stepping into the vestibule and releasing the door, it slammed shut behind her with a resounding thud and clank of the lock resetting itself. Startled, she stumbled on the first stair and grabbed the railing for support. Her hand reflexively went to her gun. She had read enough Richard Castle novels to know that situations like the one she found herself in now were often not what they seemed.

A text from an unknown number leading her to an equally unfamiliar location, this was the perfect place for a plot twist, and the thought actually made her smile as she worked her way methodically up the stairs.

As she reached the top, Beckett was assailed by familiar kitchen smells and sounds that elicited deeply seated emotions that were both intense and fluctuating wildly out of her control. The light from the upstairs room drifted warmly into the open stairway in inviting accompaniment. Her shoulders relaxed in response and her hand drifted away from her holster as she reached to push her hair back behind her ear.

Kate knew before her line of sight allowed her to see into the room that he was the one waiting for her with an absolute certainty that defied any rational explanation. With a racing heart and skin heating from the inside out over muscles tense with anticipation and apprehension, she steeled herself to face what frightened her most; the unadulterated truth.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Kate had not known exactly what to expect from either of them when she first saw him. Having not been able to settle on an idea of what he would be doing or what she would do when they found themselves in the same room, reality filled in the blanks. Castle stood in the kitchen area of the safe house in front of the stove tasting something that smelled deliciously familiar. Beckett couldn't stop herself from staring at him. He looked the same. Dark thick mane of hair, piercing blue eyes, and a square jaw and body build that had the same visceral, sexual impact on her that it always had. But looks could be deceiving, and in this case she knew they were. The man she married, was not the man that stood before her now. The person she loved was still in there, of that she was certain, but he was not the same. There were facets to him that she had never been privy to because he had chosen more than once to bury them so deep that even he had been unaware they were lurking there. Now that the part of him that had been interred in the shadows of his psyche for so long was now free to take its rightful place in Castle's personality, she couldn't help but wonder if this new more complex man would feel about her the way the old one had. Even more unsettling to her though was the potentiality that something in him would impact their former dynamic in such a profound way, that one or both of them would find continuing their relationship untenable.

As though he had been giving her a moment to acclimate, he took his time before finally looking up from the dinner he was concocting to greet her, "Hey."

His voice was gentle, kind and so much like the man she knew before their world had imploded. Yet, it still surprised her how easily the practiced return flowed from her, "Hey."

Their customary monosyllabic mutual greeting did little to dispel the paralyzing rigor that had taken hold of her, as she stared at him - no into him-, from the point of entry to the space that was just one huge open loft. No walls, no separate rooms, no places to hide. How apropos.

Castle didn't move from where he was solidly behind the kitchen island. He seemed to be waiting. She could feel it. Whether it was calculated or simply out of habit born compassion, it was hard to tell, but he did it. She tried to force something else out of her vocal chords but couldn't.

"You came," he smiled at her like he had so many times before and the warmth permeating his tone chased the chill from her.

His words had somehow freed her own, "Did you think for even one moment that I wouldn't?"

His grin brightened ever so slightly in self-deprecation, "Maybe one."

Encouraged by his warm, relaxed demeanor, and how familiar he seemed, Kate found herself moving across the room stopping only after she had rounded the corner of the kitchen island leaving nothing concrete between them.

She couldn't help the smile that turned up the corner of the bottom lip that was caught gently between her teeth, "I'm really glad you're not dead."

Castle turned off the burner to the stove, put down the utensil he had been using to stir his savory concoction, and turned to face the woman who was still his wife feeling more composed than he had anticipated, "Yeah, me too." His facial expression morphed somewhat when guilt ebbed into the canvas, "I'm sorry about that." He hesitated grasping for the right words to express what he wanted to say all the while knowing there really weren't any for a case like this, "Putting you through the hell of thinking I was dead. That I died that way. It had to be excruciating. It really was not my call and never part of the plan." He looked horribly conflicted on multiple levels. "It just…"

She gave him a few seconds to continue, and when he couldn't, she saved him, "Happened."

His face darkened, and a look she had seen only one other time crossed his visage. She had seen it right before he walked alone into a bedroom to extract information from the man who had kidnapped Alexis. Kate had never asked Castle exactly what he had done to get him to talk, but the memory of what she heard that day through the door took on more ominous undertones and, at the same time, made more sense to her now than they had then. Why hadn't she questioned him more? What had made her so eager to dismiss his lone wolf excursion half way around the world to rescue his daughter as simply impulsive bravado? How had it been so easy for her to accept without question Alexis' safe return and the nice tidy story that had come with it?

That was only one of many clues, curious hints and anecdotal evidence that there had been more to Richard Castle mystery novelist all along than met the eye. So many miraculous moments where he had saved their lives with an almost impossible shot or equally implausible plan or somehow took out a seemingly unstoppable foe in a battle of strength.

All of the questions she had never asked herself or him caused silence to bubble up between them, so he went for the wine, "Here, have a drink."

Kate accepted the glass of her favorite red and flushed slightly when his fingers brushed hers causing so many tangled emotions to stir beneath the surface calm, "You remembered."

"Of course, I remember," he laughed softly, and suddenly the man she knew was back and that allowed her to laugh too, neither missing the irony embedded in the comment.

He took a step toward her as she deposited her wine glass on the counter. Their eyes found one another and each saw the same thing in the other. Questions, anxiety, relief, anger, frustration, longing, lust, and yes, love.

Beckett managed to wrench her gaze from his to demand her first answer, "Who are you?"

His intake of breath, though ragged, remained controlled as if measuring his response, "That's a fair question."

The wine glass was back in her hand and a heavy draught from it shored up her resolve to hear to truth, "I need to know everything. All of it."

He nodded somberly, but had to glance away from the look of confusion and hurt on her face, "It's a long story, Kate."

The sadness in his voice and the casual use of her first name brought her gaze back around to the profile he was now showing her, "I've got no place else to be."

Castle took his own glass and walked away from her, toward the living area, and she couldn't help but notice that he stopped where he could see out the window, but could not be seen, "You're a spy – just like your father."

He wheeled around suddenly eyes ablaze with something in them she did not recognize, "I'm not my father."

Allowing the emotions of the last few days set fire to her own, she pushed him, "You're not an agent with the DSS?"

Feeling backed into a corner, he couldn't temper the terseness etching each word of his retort, "Would it make things better between us if I said yes?"

"So this is how it's going to be? This is the no-holds-barred truth you're so desperate to have between us? Flippant non-answers." Frustration and disappointment cycled within her.

"Truth? Forgive me if I question your right to judge me about my truth when your relationship with the concept is questionable at best." The years of rejection and pain that belonged to Richard Castle, her husband and partner, pulsed vibrantly from this new version of the man.

The blow struck hard because it was true, but it was also far more complicated than that, "I never lied to you about who I was. I had been living as the man you met for fifteen years. The elements of my history that were hidden from you were not a part of me anymore." It was clear from the look on his face that he understood how weak his explanation sounded. "Look, what I did twenty-plus years ago had nothing to do with you. The man I was when we met was the only man I knew how to be."

"What about later, Castle? What about after you disappeared, and they gave you back all of your memories? You were gone for months. I searched for you. I never stopped. I couldn't - even when everyone else gave you up for dead. I knew that if you were truly gone from this world that I would know it. I would have felt it. So I continued to believe you would come back to me…that there was a reason you had evaporated off the face of the earth on the most important day of our lives together. And when you did come back, you had a gunshot wound, exposure to foreign illness, and huge gaping wholes in your memory you couldn't explain. So all those answers that I had been waiting for… answers that I needed, weren't there. The first time you let them fuck with your mind, you're right, it was your decision. You had no one to answer to then, but this time was different. Did you even think of me at all? Did it cross your mind that I might not be able to let this thing go without explanation? That not knowing what really happened, where you had been and what had been so important that you would abandon me on our wedding day could damage our relationship to the point that maybe I wouldn't be able to…" she paused not wanting to say what was burning a hole in the back of her throat.

This time he saved her, "Forgive me. You might not be able to forgive me."

Trying to control her emotions caused a searing tightness behind her eyes as they teared anyway, "Trust you. I didn't know if I would be able to trust you not to leave me again. Without an explanation as to why you had done it before, how could I possibly know you wouldn't do it again if something important enough came along? And that… that is something I won't live through a second time. To lose you and never know why… or how… or to what."

The sun was setting and the natural light in the room dimmed leaving them feeling less exposed to one another and that was a good thing considering the rawness of the moment, "What should I do with the feelings I have about when you left me?" His voice was neither plaintive nor childlike. It was cold and self-protective. "You chose chasing down LokSat, avenging the deaths of your FED team, and working with a perfect stranger over the life together we were finally going to get the chance to have. You flat out lied to me over and over about why you needed time away. You let me think it was about us; that there was something in our relationship that was not making you happy. Do you have any idea what that did to me? After everything we had been through - all of the waiting for you to be ready. Waiting for your choice to finally be me?"

Kate was seeing her actions for the first time through only his eyes, "I was trying to protect you."

He looked livid, "That is a bullshit excuse. We have spent the last decade working together where we put ourselves in danger almost every day. We survived tigers, dirty bombs, trained assassins and almost being drowned in the Hudson in a submerged police vehicle. What the fuck made you think I needed your protection for this?"

His words made sense and the strands holding her motives together began to unravel in her head, "Castle, I only wanted to…"

"Wanted to what, Kate? Change your mind? Go back in time and never married me at all? That is what I thought you were thinking. What you wanted. Hell, it's what everyone around us thought too. "

"Stop calling me that!" The demand came out of nowhere and was so intensely charged that it stopped the momentum of their argument dead in its tracks.

His face softened when the anger abandoned it, and he had stepped near enough to finally touch her, "I don't understand."

Kate's eyes were pasted to the floor and her hair protected her face from his questioning gaze as she spoke so quietly he had to lean in even closer to hear her, "Beckett. He always called me Beckett."

They had so much history, too much really, for this moment to be any different than it was. Cyclone force winds had blown them off course so many times throughout the mutated progression of their journey as a pair. The problem was that many of those storms and the detours provoked by them were of their own devising.

Pain washed over and through them both prompting a flight response each was having trouble resisting, "I don't know how to fix this. I'm not even sure it should be."

Beckett reached out and rested her hand on his arm stopping him from putting more physical distance between them, "When did you sign the divorce papers?"

The hard turn the conversation took caught him by surprise, "What?"

Kate took a deep breath and steadied her gaze so she could look at him when he answered, "Did you sign them before or after you got your memory back?"

Questions flashed into his mind as he tried to puzzle through where she was going with this, "Why does it matter?"

"It matters. Answer the question!" Her voice was commanding, and she was perplexed when its anticipated impact barely registered on his face.

He thought he knew what she was looking for, and it made him sad that he could not give it to her, "Before."

The answer was a physical blow that caused her hand to drop away letting him go, "I see."

This time he took both of her arms in his hands and forced her to look at him, "No, Beckett, you don't. That's always been part of our problem. You think you know things that you don't, and you never bother to ask before you go off half charged thinking things about me…about us… that were never true to begin with."

Her facial expression told him that she thought he was wrong, so he continued, "What do you think I would have said if you had asked me to help you bring down LokSat?"

"Castle, I couldn't leave you exposed to the possible repercussions of going after them." The excuse came out easily, but rang hollow in the open air of the huge apartment.

"That wasn't what I asked you," he forced her back to the question.

She closed her eyes because she couldn't bring herself to look at him as she answered, "You would have said yes."

A fresh, swirling wash of adrenaline boiled up suddenly forcing him to placate his need for space, and he had to walk away from her, "So you did know. You just chose to shut me out."

"I know that's how you see it," the admission didn't come easily or without guilt.

He wheeled on his heel so she could see his face if she dared, but he kept his distance, "That's how everyone saw it."

"I never set out to hurt you." She meant it, but somehow didn't think he could believe her.

He shook his head trying to clear it, "I don't think you intentionally wanted to hurt me. I think it was just habit. I had let you get away with doing as you please with absolutely zero consequences for so long that it was actually quite natural for you to do it again and think it would be okay. The man I was – he was so desperate to have you that your actions – no matter how sketchy or questionable – never cost you anything."

"So this is all on me. It's my fault we ended up here," her tone was equally indignant and self-assaultive.

"You don't get to do that." Castle's voice had dropped to a low even pitch, "We are here because this is where OUR choices have taken us. We are here because for some reason, we couldn't get on the same page long enough to even begin to get it right. We held our secrets closer than we did each other. The trust just never materialized. I've wracked my brain trying to figure it out – where exactly we went wrong, but I've come to realize that it doesn't even matter anymore. We just don't work. I don't think we ever did – not in a way that was going to last anyway. That's why I left the divorce papers. That's why I signed them, and why you should too if you haven't already."

Seconds passed before he saw it from where he was across the room. Her trembling shoulders providing the telltale first sign of her breaking down, and it made him want to go to her, take her in his arms and reassure her that everything was going to be alright. It was what he had done a thousand times before. He had done it to keep the peace, to maintain the status quo – to keep her with him. But to do it now would be to deny the truth, and he was done with that even if it cost him everything. And just like she couldn't bring herself to sign the papers that would set them free from what she had to know by now was a dead end street, he couldn't be that man – not anymore.


	14. Chapter 14 - Time Will Tell

**Reader's Note:** The Diplomatic Security Service is the lead U.S. law enforcement organization abroad, and is the most widely represented law enforcement agency in the world. Its duties include protecting U.S. diplomatic missions, U.S. diplomats, and visiting foreign dignitaries; conducting criminal, counter-terrorism, and counterintelligence investigations abroad; advising U.S. ambassadors on security matters; and managing or implementing security programs worldwide. The majority of DSS Special Agents are jointly Foreign Service specialists and American federal law enforcement officers, making the DSS unique, as most other federal law enforcement agents are members of the Federal Civil Service. _**However, a small percentage of DS special agents are members of the State Department's civil service (GS-1811), and are not mandated to serve tours overseas. These special agents focus on criminal work and dignitary protection within the United States**_. The DSS Special Agent hiring process is widely regarded as one of the most difficult and challenging within both the federal government and general law enforcement alike. _**All agents**_ must qualify for security clearance at the level of Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI).

Chapter 14 –Time Will Tell

A horde of agitated butterflies battered the insides of newly minted DSS Special Agent Alexis Castle as she pushed through the front doors of the 12th precinct for the first time in well over two years. Flashing her badge to the desk sergeant, her confidence was emboldened by the fact that she didn't know him, and even more so that he didn't seem to know her.

"I need to see the officer in charge of guns and gangs," her voice deliberately neglected to carry an indication that there was any discussion to be had about her request.

As the sergeant picked up the phone to call up stairs, the young agent didn't fail to register the strained impatience of the two equally green special agents standing slightly behind and to her left. Impulsively, yet decisively, she indicated without words that she knew the way and headed toward the elevator with her dark suited backup close on her heels.

The other female agent with her waited for the elevator doors to slide shut before she asked the questions, "Should we have just taken off like that? Do you even know where we are going?"

The fiery red head kept her cool, "I practically grew up here."

The elevator dinged on the floor of their destination, and the three fresh-faced FEDs stepped off with one task in mind. Find their illegally detained low-level Russian diplomat, return her to the consulate, and get back to the office and file a report detailing a successful and uneventful interaction with local law enforcement.

The call from the front desk had alerted the bullpen to their imminent arrival and both sides found themselves pleasantly surprised when they came face to face, "Alexis?"

The unanticipated interaction immediately elicited a pleasure response from her and she smiled broadly, "Ryan?"

"Oh my god, Little Castle, look at you!" Sergeant Kevin Ryan had the young woman locked in a bear hug before she could do anything to prevent it.

Cringing at the juvenile personal reference, she returned the embrace just long enough to avoid being rude. She extricated herself as quickly as she could, surmising correctly that her cohorts were drinking in every nuanced move and word, "You're guns and gangs now and made sergeant. Congratulations! I can't imagine anyone who deserves it more."

The long time NYPD cop backed up a couple of feet and scanned the youthful group, "Yeah, you know with three little ones to feed at home, I had to move out to move up."

"Three? Oh wow, time really has gotten away from us. I need to do a better of job of checking in." Alexis found herself running out of content and patience with the small talk.

Sensing the subtle shift, Ryan crossed his arms over his chest letting the visitors know the reunion was officially over, "What can the 12th Precinct do for the DSS today?"

She found no reason not to divert the conversation directly to the purpose of her visit; "We are here to transport Ena Egorova back to the Russian consulate. Our office was informed that she is being detained here."

His eyebrows rose slightly indicating some offense had been taken, "Detained? Now, that's a pretty serious word you're throwing around kiddo."

The male agent who had come with the group finally spoke up, "That's Special Agent Castle."

Ryan's grin expanded on the surface, but underneath a career long dislike of interference by the FEDs reared its head, "Of course it is. My apologies."

Alexis chose to ignore them both, "If you could just produce Ms. Egorova, we can assume custody and get out of your way."

His eyes narrowed, "You don't even want to know what she's doing here?"

Her shoulders tightened causing them to square up, "Let's say we go down that road. You tell me all about whatever fabricated charge was tapped to bring her here. I tell you she has diplomatic immunity and doesn't have to and shouldn't talk to you. You lament the dangerous precedent and nature of diplomatic immunity, and I offer empathy for your point of view. Whether we have the conversation or not, we end up with the same result. I get Ena and you get nothing."

The forced smile Kevin had been holding in place completely dissolved and was swapped out for something markedly different and not entirely complementary, "Time really has changed things."

Alexis really had not wanted things to go sideways, but it was her first time as lead agent on company business, and there was no way she was walking out of the precinct without what she came for, "Is this going to get complicated?"

He stared at her realizing that the little girl he remembered was now a woman with a job she obviously took very seriously, "No complications on my end." He stepped away from the three and gave muted orders to two detectives who had been sitting relaxed in their desk chairs watching the whole scene unfold.

When they had both gotten up and left the room, he returned to the waiting group, "Can I speak to you for a moment, Special Agent Castle?"

Alexis looked over her shoulder indicating that she would be right back and then followed the sergeant into his office. Once the door was closed, she decided the best course of action was to wait and see where this was going.

"Your diplomat is in some kind of trouble," Ryan couldn't let the daughter of a friend walk out of the precinct without at least giving her a heads up.

"What kind of trouble?" The girl knew the kind of man she was dealing with, so instinct pushed her to take him at his word.

"We're not sure. Believe it or not, my guys dragged her in here tonight because she looked like she was trying to get away from someone. She was practically running through one of the sketchier parts of Little Russia. When my officers approached to see what the problem was, she begged to be cuffed up and put in the back of their cruiser. Once she got here, she clammed up completely and asked for the consulate to be advised of her detainment – though technically she wasn't being held at all."

Alexis was certain she was getting the whole story, not just because of her own previous interactions with him, but because of his past close relationship with her father, "She hasn't said anything at all?"

"Not a word after asking about the phone call," Ryan had nothing else to offer, but a gut feeling that there was more to Ena Egorova than either of them knew.

She stood up and extended her hand to him when she saw out of her periphery the two detectives returning with a young woman between them that she presumed was her wayward Russian. "Thanks for the inside scoop on my girl."

His smile returned, and with it a touch of admiration for the woman she had become, "Don't be such a stranger, kid."

This time she took the reference to their shared past as a compliment, "I won't." She allowed him to open the door for her and paused briefly as they approached the elevator, "I'll tell my dad when I see him later that I saw you."

"Castle's in town?" He sounded surprised, but genuinely excited by the news.

"Yeah, we pretty much all are due to the UN General Assembly firing up this week." The girl was eager to be done with this case, but a bit melancholy to say goodbye so soon to someone who reminded her of some very happy times.

He nodded, "That makes sense." He let her take a step toward the elevator, but stopped her before she was inside, "You going to drop by the Captain's office?"

Her face clouded into a mosaic of emotions, and a pasted on smile failed to reach her eyes, "Maybe next visit."

The foursome settled into the elevator and the doors began to slide shut as he called after her, "I'll tell her you said hey."

All Alexis could do was nod before she could no longer see his face. She was glad that was the case because she was certain whatever he might read on hers would not have translated into anything good.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Kate could have sworn the glass from every window in her office had already traversed the breadth of the room and fragmented into a zillion pieces carpeting the floor where she suddenly found herself before she ever heard the explosion. Pulling up slowly to her knees only intensified the shrill ringing that was piercing her brain right behind her eyes. Continuing the struggle to stand through some severe disorientation caused her stomach to try and heave what remained of her last meal. She managed to fight the urge back, but couldn't quite get to her feet without collapsing back to her knees.

There was no way to be sure, but Beckett had the feeling that she had lost some time between the last moment she could pull from recent memory to this one that was rife with sirens of all kinds wailing inside and out of the precinct. A catastrophic event had just hit her house and getting up off the floor and clearing her head were the first steps she needed to take to ensure that her people made it through alive whatever this turned out to be.

"Beckett! Beckett! Where are you?" Javi burst through the door anxiety plastered all over his face.

"Here; I'm here," her voice was low, but solid.

"We have to evacuate now." He ran to where she was still crumpled on her knees and pulled her to her feet firmly, but as carefully as he could.

"What happened?" She fought another wave of nausea as he practically dragged her through the outer office area and to the stairs.

He was in soldier mode, "Just keep going. Stay close. The building is being cleared out through the back. Whatever this is took out the main entrance."

Kate's head was finally extricating itself from the mental fog she had been immersed in, "It was a bomb."

He paused, but only briefly, "Yeah, I was in the evidence room in the basement, and it sounded like some kind of explosive charge to me too. We gotta keep moving."

Once outside the air was even harder to take in without choking. Black acrid smoke had billowed up high into the sky over the building and spread out over the block making it even more likely that she had been unconscious for at least a short time before Espo found her, "Follow me."

She took off around the corner with him right on her heels. Fire and rescue was already on scene, and she recognized and was relieved by the organized chaos brought on by that fact. Reassurance on that point, however, didn't keep her from propelling herself toward the epicenter of the damage. There she saw what was left of two cars that had been parked squarely in front of the 12th's front doors. One was incinerated to the point that it was impossible to tell what kind of car it had been; the other was still being pummeled with water and some chemical agent she could not readily identify. That one, she was certain, was a government issued sedan, but that was about all she could ascertain.

The fire battalion chief waved her over, his face grim, "We got casualties, Captain."

Beckett noted three ambulances, "How many? How bad?"

He yelled something to a group of firemen about waiting for SWAT to clear the building of any secondary devices before launching a more in depth search for more victims before he answered her, "So far two fatalities and two injured. The more critical patient has been shipped to Mount Sinai, but the other is still on site and conscious and refusing transport. From the looks of it, might be one of yours."

Javi's face registered the same anguish as hers, but she pushed the threatening emotional response away for the time being, "Let's make sure everyone is accounted for. Find Ryan and Lanie and get them to help you. I need a comprehensive list of who was in the precinct at the time of the explosion, and then we need to find them. Everyone is to be located."

Grateful for something useful to do, he bolted into the mayhem without a second thought for himself. She watched him go for a brief moment before turning back to the chief, "The injured officer – what makes you think he is one of mine?"

"Kept saying that we had to find her phone because she had to report in. If you want to see for yourself, she is being attended to by the paramedics in the back of one of the ambulances." His radio was on blast, and he walked away from her after nodding supportively in her direction letting her know he had his role in the situation in hand.

The chief had said "her" and that simple pronoun sent Beckett's mind back into panic mode. Lanie had been on duty in the morgue, and she had yet to lay eyes on the M.E. since their ritual morning coffee and tea. Skirting the mass of firefighters working the still burning building, she registered the sheer multitude of uniformed officers from hers and surrounding precincts who had set up a perimeter around the entire block. This city and its lion hearted public servants never failed to show up when the shit hit the fan. No other trait epitomized the character of New York's police and fire personnel any better and was in large part what had kept her committed to her job as captain over the last two very difficult years.

When she reached the triage staging area where the ambulances were waiting, the third one in line had its engine running and its lights were flashing, but the back doors were flung wide open. She rapped on the side of the truck to announce her arrival and to get the attention of anyone inside.

Beckett immediately took stock of the woman hunched over in a sitting position on the gurney with her elbows on her knees. She was covered in soot, her clothing was scorched, and she had lost one of her shoes. In one hand she held an oxygen mask and the other a blue barf bag. The paramedic was adjusting the IV line she had obviously just started on the patient while the woman rotated back and forth between breathing deeply from the oxygen mask and vomiting what looked like frothy, gooey, hot tar into the bag.

When the medic stepped to the other side of the rig, Kate's own breath was momentarily trapped in her chest like the inside of a latex balloon, "Oh my god, Alexis!" She bolted inside the ambulance and sat down beside the young woman she hadn't seen in a very long time.

There were multiple lacerations scattered around her face and neck and the girl's eyes were red and swollen. A blood vessel had burst in her left eye filling it with blood and a thin line of red mucous laced fluid dripped sluggishly from her ear on the same side. She kept blinking trying to clear the blurry vision it was causing to no avail, "Beckett." Her voice was raspy and hoarse.

"What's going on? What are you doing here? Are you alright?" Dismay shook her calm loose for a second.

The paramedic interjected providing what information she had been able to gather, "She was here on official business for some government agency; the DDS or something."

"DSS – she's a special agent with the Diplomatic Security Service," Kate met Alexis' eyes, and there was surprise in them.

The woman took more of an interest in the new arrival, "You know her? She's having a hard time communicating clearly at this point. Is there someone you know of that I can call for her?"

The question forced the air she had been holding inside from her lungs, "Her father."

"Great, do you have the number?" She stood there starting at her expectantly with a clipboard and pen in her hand.

Reeling thoughts, muddled answers, and uncertainty infused her response, "I do, or um, I did if he hasn't changed it." She sat down beside the injured girl and gently rubbed her back between the shoulders as another coughing fit ripped through her, "You're okay. Just take some more deep breaths."

After several minutes the symptoms subsided enough for her to speak, "My phone – it's toast, and I have to make a call."

Beckett pulled out her own personal cell and offered it to her, "I'm not sure your dad will answer, but you can give it a try."

Alexis reached for it with a weak gratitude infused smile, but as luck would have it, she never got the chance to make that call.


	15. Chapter 15 - Blast Radius

Chapter 15 – Blast Radius

Paxton Harper barged into the back of the ambulance with all the authority afforded her by the badge she wore slung low on her boot cut jeans and the fear and anxiety that the critical incident text she had received on her cell had spawned. Her sudden arrival had induced a startled heightened awareness which was quickly replaced on the injured rookie's face by what Kate could only deconstruct as relief when the newcomer's eyes met hers, "Pax, I'm so sorry."

Harper push by everyone to reach her, "Unless you went black-hat from your unlikely-to-be-a-bomber psych profile and decided to blow up a police station, you have nothing to apologize for."

She struggled to talk through the oxygen mask, but when she tried to take it off, the senior agent stopped her, "I assume you are wearing that for a reason." The girl immediately ceased struggling to remove it as though she had been given an order.

Having determined that her charge was in no immediate danger, she habitually profiled the other occupants in the rig. Dismissing the paramedic quickly as competent and a non-threat, her eyes rested on the strikingly attractive woman who sat close enough to Alexis on the gurney to indicate more than just a cursory familiarity. Paxton smiled broadly and it lit up her gas-jet blue eyes as she extended her hand, "Captain Beckett, Paxton Harper, DSS."

Kate shook the tall, athletically built woman's hand, "You sure got here in a hurry." She made the observation looking for more information.

Harper's expression did not alter in the smallest aspect as she responded without taking the expected hesitation to consider her answer, "I wasn't far away; this being Lex's first lead retrieval and escort."

Confusion strayed through her thoughts as she tried to add up all the details that were coming at her way too fast, "Her what?"

The agent threw the still struggling to breathe patient a curt, reproving look, "You were not aware she and her team were in your house?"

Beckett shook her head and stared hard enough at the chastised girl to give her no other choice than to make eye contact, "No, I was not."

The senior agent's facial expression did not improve as her tone worsened, "I'm counting on you having a really excellent explanation for this."

Alexis shifted the oxygen mask where she could speak, but was still getting the benefit of it, "My asset was being detained by guns and gangs. I cleared my presence with the sergeant on duty in that unit."

Paxton had to concede that the "letter of the law" had been met regarding the agency's policy as it related to working cooperatively with local law enforcement, but she also knew there was more behind her chosen approach than that, "Any particular reason why you didn't check in with Captain Beckett? It's not like you don't have history."

Her eyes darted between the two women as if she were suddenly embroiled in an emotional tug-of-war, but the younger woman's response didn't let it show, "My goal was to get in and out with the asset and return her to the consulate with as little disruption to local PD as possible. That's the training."

Harper seemed to accept the explanation at face value and warmth returned to her facial expression as it relaxed, "Works for me. Captain?"

Kate was working up her own profile as she took in the personal dynamic between Alexis and the senior agent who was quite clearly more than just her handler, "You saw Ryan?"

"Yes ma'am. He coordinated the hand-off himself; it went off without a hitch," she assured her.

"Seems like there was no need to go upstairs on this one," Paxton had landed firmly on her agent's side. "We good here?"

Beckett recognized and respected the play and chose to go along with it for the time being, "We are."

Harper's demeanor quickly shifted to getting some information of her own, "Egorova? She one of the fatalities?"

"Who told you we had any deaths?" Kate couldn't hold back the inquiry.

She continued in her relaxed amiable way, "I had the kids on a pretty short leash, so I was tied into all available coms."

Kate found the agent's continued straightforward approach to answering her questions refreshing and marginally disarming, "Tied in?"

Again that likable smile, "Had to make sure my puppies didn't make a mess in your backyard, didn't I?"

Beckett knew that she was being handled, but found that there was something about the open sincerity that kept Beckett from being irritated by it, "They may not have been the cause, but they are at the epicenter of it."

Alexis interrupted the conversation, "Where are the others?"

Once again, Harper had concrete intel that Beckett did not, "Miknal is critical." Her lack of specifics regarding the other agent in the group delineated his fate.

Her face flushed with white-hot anger and piercing loss that served to mobilize her, "I have to get out of here."

All three women stepped in to deter her, but Paxton's words carried the weight of an order, "You are going to a hospital to get scanned and stitched and probed and whatever else the doctors think needs to happened to be sure you're alright."

"Probed?" The ire that had been electrified by the group interference dissolved instantaneously when they both smiled. "I wasn't abducted by aliens. I'm fine."

Harper only shrugged having fluidly eased the wired mood that had been walled in by the ambulance to something more easily tolerated by everyone present.

Kate wanted to make it clear that she was of the same mind, but couldn't formulate the words into a cogent argument before the agent made hers, "You probably are. Your damn head is as hard as your father's. That said; you are still going to get checked out. He's already going to be pissed that you got blown up on my watch day one."

Smiling weakly the girl couldn't help but add, "And I'll lay money you didn't even tell him that I was going solo."

A look that mocked surprise illuminated her face, "I was going to tell him, but he gets so…"

Beckett, though fascinated by the complex dynamic between the two women, received a message on her phone that curbed any further investigation into the ties that bound them for the moment, "I have to go, but I will check on you later. You know I'm going to need a statement."

Alexis deferred to her handler who answered cordially, "That won't be a problem."

Hesitating briefly, she had to defy the urge to say and do what she would have done so easily a couple of years before and settle for a mundanely safe exit line, "I'm glad you're okay. Agent Harper, I'll be in touch."

She nodded back at her openly and seemingly without contrivance or shrouded manipulation. Kate found herself speculating as she pushed open the back door of the ambulance that this federal agent, if she was to be taken at face value, was like no other she had ever met.

Bolting from the vehicle, her preoccupation with the text she had received splintered into jigsaw fragments when yet another left-field undulation in the events of an already convoluted day knocked what was left of her composure completely out of reach. The past and the present slammed ruthlessly into one another further usurping her already tenuous physical and emotional balance. She was truly unprepared for the abrupt and merciless, wound baring reemergence of her history, "Castle." The name caressed her lips as it whispered past while momentum carried her body inescapably forward. Bracing herself for the duality of the coming impact, her consciousness attempted to cope with more than just his closing physical proximity. She had been missing him for so long - more days than she could bring herself to continue to count - that his unforeseen materialization amid this new catastrophe hit her harder than the blast that had taken out every window in her office.

Both had pondered numerous times what it would be like in that inevitable moment when they came face to face once again. Neither had doubted for even a microsecond that it would happen one day. All that was left to chance was the where and the when. How much time would separate them this time? And, of course, what circumstance would inexorable fate choose as the vehicle of their next encounter?

A bomb. Of course, it had to be a bomb. Neither found it extraordinary. Instead they recognized that it had a kind of poetry to it. Not the variety that soothed and brought peace to the exhausted questioning mind, but the prose that took shady shots at prior decisions and their consequences and revealed jagged, razor sliced insight into the lives of travail ravaged poets.

He caught her in his arms, the muscle memory of her still a part of him, "Kate." The taste of her name on his tongue traveled through him like an electric shock.

There was no attempt to fight off the intensity behind their intersecting gazes. The world around them was burning, the air they struggled to breathe choked with acrid smoke, and people they cared for were in danger, but even all of that could not circumvent the energy between them that caused the very air around them to vibrate and freeze them both in a moment of indescribable pleasure and pain.

Words. He tried to summon them. The intelligence asset "slash" writer was blocked; locked inside his mind unable to find a cogent path through a maze of thought interwoven erratically with sentiment and rational decision-making. So he did the one thing he never would have before his memories were restored leading to the reunification of the long separated halves of himself. This Richard Castle ventured way outside the lines that delineated the man she knew him to be before everything in their world had changed. He kissed her.


End file.
